The Bond Market Is Waking Up to the Fiscal Mess in Washington
Treasury auctions are like the plumbing of a toilet: You only pay attention when something goes wrong. A weak auction drove a market selloff on Wednesday for the first time since late 2023. There are good reasons to be concerned about overspill.
The auction itself should have been uneventful. It involved some $16 billion of 20-year bonds sold to investors—no big deal. But there was less demand from end-investors than usual, and the price was lower—so the government's borrowing cost higher—than had been expected in advance.
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