Jackson Hole, Treasury buybacks, and Korea

Thanks, Shreyas.

Well, in some ways it's actually been a relatively quiet summer, which makes a change from several recent summers when we had these huge wobbles, these big risk of moves in markets.

We haven't seen that this year.

Indeed, earlier in the month, we had, you know, equities at record highs, uh, rates markets pricing in limited central bank rate cuts, oil well down from the peaks.

In some ways it looked almost like a Goldilocks setup.

But in the last week in particular, we have started to see a few more limited wobbles, particularly on the rate side, and most notably we've seen long end yields in particular much higher, not just in the US but around the world.

So for instance, on Monday of last week, the 30-year US Treasury yield, that hit its highest since two thousand and seven at five point three one percent.

And similarly here in Europe, the 10-year bond yield, that was at three point two six percent last week, the highest since the Euro crisis in 2011.

So lots of records being set.

And tying into the current news flow, that led in part to a surprise announcement from the US Treasury Department last week that they would be increasing the size of their buybacks for long end treasuries.

So they're gonna be purchasing more in order to bring yields down.

But that also led to concerns in markets about whether this might lead to some sort of financial repression.

So we didn't just see moves in treasuries, we saw the dollar weaken pretty sharply.

Actually, gold prices are at a three-month high today.

So the idea of this debasement theme, this debasement trade has certainly come back, and that's quite timely again this week because this Friday we'll hear from, uh, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh at the Jackson Hole Symposium, which is a great opportunity for us to bring in our guest, Chief US Economist Matt Lazetti.