The Bond Market Chaos Is Coming for Us All

Produced by Rollin Hu

The Bond Market Chaos Is Coming for Us All

This is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.

The U.S. Treasury market is the most important financial market in the world, bar none. Most of us don’t participate in it directly — we don’t go in the morning to buy Treasury bonds — but Treasury bonds define everything from how the stock market ends up performing to the cost of a mortgage, a car loan, a credit card. There is almost nothing financial they do not touch.

The U.S. Treasury market has been looking a little weird lately. The cost of borrowing for the U.S. government is going up, probably because our debt recently surpassed $40 trillion. We now spend more on interest on that debt annually than we spend on the entire defense budget.

Donald Trump has also been more and more erratic.

Archival clip of Donald........

© The New York Times