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The Retired Investor: Could higher bond yields simply reflect a stronger economy?
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Over the last month, equity investors have grown concerned with the rapid rise in U.S. Treasury bond yields.
Higher interest rates should spell danger for stocks. And yet, equities are still less than 2 percent from all-time highs. What gives?
Many financial experts say bond yields are rising because of oil prices, inflation, out-of-control government spending, Trump tariffs, and anticipation of Fed rate hikes. What if the explanation was much simpler? Could higher bond yields simply reflect a stronger growth economy?
This isn’t a new concept. The higher growth/yield correlation occurred in 1994, 2009, and 2012. In fact, financial history is rife with similar correlations. The underlying dynamics are straightforward. When the economy grows more rapidly than expected, consumer spending and business investment increase, as does the stock market. That’s a good thing if it doesn’t contribute to higher inflation.
To prevent the economy from overheating and triggering more inflation, central banks often raise interest rates to make borrowing more expensive. As readers know, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank has begun an interest rate tightening cycle at its September meeting. The odds that they will tighten again in October have come down. It is perfectly natural for bond yields to rise in anticipation of a hiking cycle.
That is exactly what at least one eminent Fed president sees in this recent climb in bond yields. I caught a CNBC interview with New York Fed President John Williams, a permanent voting member of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, last Wednesday. He remains in the wait-and-see camp among Fed Heads, while others are clamoring for more hikes.
On Tuesday, in prepared remarks, he said, "With the policy action we took at our September meeting, there is no need for urgency, and we have time to gather more information."
Williams is one of those Fed figures I pay attention to because he has a great deal of experience in the financial markets and keeps his cool when others don’t. When asked about yields, he said, "What’s driving it, in large part, is a really strong economy and a strong economic outlook fueled by big investments in AI and data centers and technology in general."
Williams laid out his base case for interest rates when he said: "If the economy evolves in a manner broadly consistent with my forecast, one further upward adjustment of the federal funds target range may be appropriate late this year to support a timelier return of inflation to target."
One way to see whether inflation or growth is driving the climb in bond yields is to determine which has moved more: real yields (nominal rates minus the inflation rate) or inflation expectations. Real yields reflect the market’s expectations of the economy's underlying strength. It is usually measured by looking at the rates on U.S. inflation-protected U.S. Treasuries called TIPS.
To see how much of a yield move is driven by inflation expectations, you measure the difference between TIPS yields and those of regular Treasury securities maturing around the same time. The gap between the two should give us an idea of what investors think the inflation rate will be during that time.
Axios Markets, a well-respected financial newsletter, crunched the numbers and discovered that over the last month the five-year real yield accounted for 0.72 percentage points in the rise in the five-year Treasury note. Inflation expectations only accounted for 0.06 percentage points of the move. Some may find that hard to believe.
Yes, I'm aware of all the consternation around the economy's inflation, but there are compelling reasons to believe the yield spike is a growth story. Second-quarter Gross Domestic Product was revised up to a 2.2 percent annualized growth rate from the previously reported 1.5 percent.
Consumer spending grew at a healthy 3.8 percent annualized pace, while stronger business investment contributed to the revision. Consider that the artificial intelligence revolution has sparked the largest capital investment boom in American history. Goldman Sachs analysts project AI spending will reach $1.3 trillion in 2027 and $2 trillion in 2028, in addition to the trillions of dollars already spent. As a result, corporate profits have grown between 20 percent and almost 30 percent per quarter for the last few quarters. The unemployment rate is at 60-year lows. That is a heck of a case for the growth/yield story.
Granted. For the ordinary worker, struggling with mounting energy bills, affordability issues, and the like, it certainly doesn’t feel like growth. In fact, American laborers are receiving the smallest share of income from these economic benefits in our nation's history. Of course, every two years, these same workers can change that equation if they so choose through the ballot box. Recently, they have chosen not to.
The Retired Investor: The ailing housing market is getting sicker
It's as if the world is against homebuilding. As mortgage rates top 7 percent, a combination of higher prices for key inputs, thanks to tariffs and the Iran war, has already decimated the sector. And yet, there is worse news for builders. ICE-inflicted labor shortages are suffocating profits and growth.
From the East to the West Coast, home builders are complaining bitterly about the administration's current immigration enforcement efforts. This year, ICE's efforts to redouble its arrests at the insistence of the White House have resulted in a surge of arrests of "illegal aliens."
And while the numbers may satisfy some in the country, they are causing consternation among the nation's homebuilders. A survey by John Burns Research and Consulting, which tracks market trends in the industry, found that the administration's immigration actions are causing severe labor shortages. This worker shortfall is driving up costs and delaying cycle times for new home construction.
Three straight months of record arrests this summer have convinced many legally authorized workers across the housing sector to stop showing up for work. Many fear that despite their legal status, if they are caught up in an ICE sweep, they could be easily deported or spend months in detention and incur huge legal fees before their status can be adjudicated.
They point to the fact that in recent months, ICE has coordinated with immigration courts to dismiss many noncitizen removal cases and immediately arrest individuals so they can be processed for expedited removal. As a result, a noncitizen but legal immigrant has little opportunity to contest or seek other relief if caught up in an ICE sweep at a construction site or factory.
Overall, immigrants comprise more than 26 percent of the construction workforce in the U.S., although that share can be even higher depending on the trade. Those in drywalling, ceiling installation, plastering, stucco masonry, roofing, painting, paper hanging, and carpet, floor, and tile installations account for more than 50 percent of workers in construction trades.
This shortage is nothing new. In a landmark 2025 study by the Home Builders Institute, the National Association of Home Builders, and the University of Denver, the study found that the skilled labor shortage in the single-family home building sector is costing the U.S. economy around $19 billion a year.
The AI boom in private data center construction has also siphoned off a swath of the existing labor pool. Through July of this year, $37 billion was spent on AI data center construction compared to $46 billion for construction of everything else, from houses, apartments, shopping centers, etc.
Add the 6.7 percent increase in building material costs, driven by tariffs and conflict-driven inflation, and you have a pretty good idea why your children can't afford to buy a home in America today.
Readers may recall that Donald Trump's immigration policies were intended to remove "Tens of Millions of Illegal Alien Criminals who poured into our country, including Hundreds of Thousands of Convicted Murderers, Rapists, Kidnappers, Drug Dealers, and Terrorists," according to a January 25th social media post by the president.
It is notoriously difficult to determine exactly how many arrests and deportations of criminal illegal immigrants have been accomplished. That alone should tell you something about the government's success rate of capturing criminal illegals. If you have a documented number, I would be grateful to know it.
As of the end of the government's 2025 fiscal year, the Cato Institute found that 73 percent of arrested illegals had no criminal record. Other news sources say less than one-third have any criminal conviction. I guess one can argue, as this administration must surely be doing, that because someone crossed into this country illegally, they are a criminal by definition.
I'm equally sure that few who may have agreed with the president's social media post (quoted above) would consider their nanny, hospital attendant, roofer, house painter, fruit picker or grass cutter fit Trump's definition of a criminal. It appears that those red-blooded Americans who build houses for a living (many of whom reside in Red States) are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the present immigration policies of the United States. How about you?
Bill Schmick is a founding partner of Onota Partners, Inc., in the Berkshires. Bill's forecasts and opinions are purely his own and do not necessarily represent the views of Onota Partners, Inc. None of his commentary is or should be considered investment advice. Direct your inquiries to his website at www.schmicksretiredinvestor.
The Retired Investor: Hedge Your Home Heating Oil Now
The Retired Investor: The Fed, the Treasury, and the bond market
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Fed raised the Fed Funds rate by one quarter percentage point on Wednesday. The markets interpreted the move as the first in what could be several more hikes in the months ahead. Will that solve our inflation problem?
The Fed can only control the short end of the yield curve. Raising the Fed Funds rate will accomplish little when the main drivers of added inflation are tariffs and the price of oil. As for the country's out-of-control spending, the debt and deficit are fiscal problems. Congress is responsible for government spending, and in this case, pressure from the White House. The President's recent promise to give every American $5,000 if the GOP wins both houses of Congress in the mid-terms would add more than another $1 trillions to the spending he has already demanded.
If the economy is growing and unemployment is low, the Fed has little effective work it can do to lower inflation. The only thing they can accomplish by raising rates is to slow demand for goods and services by curtailing credit. In which case, too many rate hikes could cause a slowdown in the economy.
What the Fed can do is work with the U.S. Treasury in accomplishing its goal—reducing the debt and deficit while maintaining growth. We know the longer end of the yield curve (10-20 and 30-year bonds) dictates economic growth. In these durations, companies and individuals borrow through mortgage rates, car loans, investments, etc.
The lower the interest rates on this kind of borrowing, the higher the economy's growth rate, the higher the tax revenue, and, theoretically, the more money there is to pay down the nation's debt. Anything the Treasury could do to lower those long-term yields would encourage higher economic growth. Especially today, when artificial intelligence promises to be as much of a productivity benefit to society as was the industrial revolution.
Both Warsh and Bessent believe the country would benefit if their two organizations worked more closely together, especially at a time when Paulson's 'doom loop' might be a real possibility. Investors are asking whether Chairman Warsh would be willing to support the Treasury in keeping long-term bond yields in check. And if so, how?
I would love to be a fly on the wall during those closed-door discussions between these two ex-hedge fund managers. The obvious answer would be for the Fed to buy more Treasury bonds, especially on the long end.
They have already increased their ownership of short-term maturities from $2,974 billion to $3,003 billion since December under the Fed's Reserve Management Purchases program. Of course, it's just a coincidence that the U.S. Treasury has raised $18.9 trillion in bond auctions this year, with a substantial portion of that in the same short-term categories.
The Fed insists this is not quantitative easing, but rather an open market operation in which the Fed injects reserves into the banking system through "permanent" asset purchases. Buying long-dated bonds would be a 'horse of a different color,' as the Wizard would say. Quantitative Easing (QT), as it is called, however, is usually implemented when the economy is declining and/or to prevent deflation—the opposite of the present situation in the U.S.
The astute reader will say that, under the present circumstances, the Fed's use of QT would be just a hop, skip, and a jump away from printing money and monetizing our debt. And wouldn't that be inflationary? Yes, unless it was considered an emergency done in combination with an effort to combat a 'doom loop' (a slowdown in the economy caused by a spike in long-term interest rates).
None of this is original. Indebted nations have used the same combination of monetary and fiscal policies repeatedly throughout history to reduce debt and avert bankruptcy. The lost decade of the Eighties in South America is an example of this kind of monetary policy maneuver, where a nation's currency fell, making its outstanding debt worth much less than it otherwise would have been. In the end, countries inflated away their debt load. It worked and returned their economies to some semblance of growth.
The difference is the U.S. is the largest economy on earth. We are not an emerging market, although we've certainly been acting like one in recent years. As long as the U.S dollar remains the world's reserve currency, we could probably get away with it. To do so, the global system requires a continuous supply of dollar liquidity and safe assets (Treasury securities). Recently, that has come under pressure through central banks' accumulation of gold, regional settlement arrangements, bilateral trade agreements outside the dollar system, and what seems to be a gradual reduction in the dollar's share of global reserves. In another column, I will address the Trump administration's recent actions to combat those dangerous trends.
I am not expecting a devaluation shock; that would jeopardize the U.S. reserve status. Instead, I believe we have already entered a period of fiscal dominance. It is a system in which our huge debt remains manageable through increasing dependence on accommodative monetary policy and structurally compressed real yields'
The Treasury's debt purchases are a case in point. Initially, Secretary Bessent announced a doubling of Treasury bond purchases to $4 billion per month. On September 9th, that amount was increased to $6 billion. It was still a drop in the bucket, given the size of the U.S. Treasury market, and yields moved higher still. The rumored use of almost $1 trillion in the Treasury's general account for bond purchases may be necessary to convince bond vigilantes that Bessent is serious.
Bessent's current support of the Japanese yen is another example of what we can expect going forward. In this case, when the Japanese yen weakens too much, as it has over the past few weeks, the Japanese government has historically sold some of its dollar holdings in U.S. Treasuries and used the proceeds to buy yen. Those sales would put added pressure on U.S. Treasury bond prices, which would force yields even higher.
To prevent this, Bessent has agreed to 'loan' dollars to Japan to buy its currency. He warned speculators that he was "the House' meaning he is controlling that market for the yen. Of course, this is a way to devalue the dollar. It was no accident that his statement goosed the price of gold, crypto, and other commodities.
I expect this kind of fiscal dominance to widen further. You can also expect increased cooperation and coordination between the Fed and the Treasury. As such, future quantitative easing, interest rate cuts, and more action to cap long bond yields are almost assured as conditions allow.
The Retired Investor: U.S bond prices fall as oil prices and inflation expectations rise
This month, the U.S. Treasury plans to triple its U.S. bond purchases from $2 billion to $6 billion from Sept. 4 through Nov. 4. Given that the market value of the Treasury market is about $30 trillion, that is a drop in the bucket if the intent is to cap yields on the long end of the yield curve.
Could the Treasury do more? Yes, according to some estimates, they could spend almost $1 trillion if they wanted to use up their checking account (called the general account). That is a lot of firepower, especially on the margin when one is seeking to control the ascent of bond yields. Debt analysts argue that the actual yield of a bond matters less than how quickly the yield accelerates.
As of this writing, the U.S. Ten-year benchmark bond is yielding 4.91 percent, while the thirty-year is yielding 5.34 percent. The present back-up in yields is not only a U.S. problem. Mounting debt and aging populations hit by a trio of global shocks- higher oil prices, inflation, and government spending are coming home to roost.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would deny that. He believes U.S. interest rates are going higher because investors believe economic growth is reaccelerating. That could be true, but it could also be a wishful spin given that we are just a few weeks away from midterm elections. In any case, don’t be surprised if the Treasury ups the amount of purchases they make again in the days ahead.
At the same time, Kevin Warsh said in his Jackson Hole speech that the Fed needs to do more work to get inflation down to its 2 percent target. The current Wall Street narrative is that Bessent is trying to cap long-term bond rates while Warsh is preparing to do the opposite — hike rates. On the surface, it appears that the two men are working at cross purposes. But could there be another explanation?
Consider this: what happened when Jerome Powell cut interest rates in September 2024 and then again in 2025? Long-term Treasury yields went up, not down, breaking a historical, four-decade cycle. Long bonds have almost always tracked the Fed's path lower. Why the change? Because the bond vigilantes began pricing in stronger-than-expected economic growth and persistent inflation.
I suspect that if Warsh had delivered a dovish message, those same vigilantes would have jacked yields higher than they already are! No, both men are working together, in other ways, for a good reason. Back in June, in a column on sovereign debt, I wrote this:
"Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who navigated us through the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, warned of a potential "doom loop" in the bond market. He worries that demand for U.S. government debt could collapse soon.
I warned readers that this could trigger a cycle of lower bond prices, higher yields, and rising inflation. The fact is that our government's Treasury market underpins everything from mortgage rates to corporate borrowing to equity prices. The former head of the Treasury urged policymakers "to prepare an emergency plan and have it ready if and when demand for U.S. government debt falters."
A crisis, as Paulson suggested, would leave the Federal Reserve as the lone buyer of our treasuries. Realistically, that would mean the government would be forced to "print" money in one form or another. That would trigger a fresh round of inflation, eroding valuations across most asset classes, including equity. This could cause a large (30 percent+) decline in the stock market."
That was a strong warning, and I believe both the Treasury and the Fed have taken him seriously. We are witnessing the beginning of such a plan. It is to be rolled out in stages. The Fed's credibility had to come first. The appointment of Warsh as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank has triggered worries that the Fed's independence is in jeopardy.
The president, an easy money advocate, had attempted to "pack" the 12-member Fed committee with his people. He also made clear that Jerome Powell's replacement would need to tow his line. As a result, Kevin Warsh came into the job tainted with a heavy dose of suspicion from skeptics both here and abroad.
Warsh's hawkish statements thus far have largely dispelled many of those fears. His willingness to let the markets dictate where long bond rates should go, while providing less communication to the financial markets, may also be part of this plan. His study committees, which analyze and adjust government data used to determine monetary policy decisions, are also part of the plan.
We will know more about how the Fed views the economy and inflation next week. The betting markets indicate that there is now a 70 percent chance than the Fed raises interest rates at their FOMC meeting on September 15-16.
Next week, I will address how the two organizations might work together, especially in a period where the possibility of Hank Paulson's 'doom loop' appears closer than ever.
