The "war" between Jerome Powell and Donald Trump on interest rates is missing one critical point. The real world. America is increasingly facing steep interest rates when it borrows on the international markets. The last $100 billion 30 Year bond auction was a disaster. It is unlikely to improve, because of the weak dollars, many investors are "re-thinking. their dollar holdings, and are coming to a similar conclusion; they have either too much or enough.
The American government's total debt burden of 37 trillion dollars has a duration of five years, that means that about 20% of the total amount has to be refinanced every year. Of this total about 2/3rd is finance in the international markets (or it has for the past few decades). In addition, under Trump the deficit is rising quickly from 6% of GDP to 9% next year. Investors are smart, they know that a big refinancing bubble is an opportunity – hence the last 10 auctions have gone badly (the treasury conducts between 1 and 3 auctions per week).
Already US borrowing costs are rising, about 0.45% this year alone. The US government needs to refinance about 11 trillion this fiscal year, in addition there is an additional deficit of 3 trillion to finance.
At one point, this is starting to be a lot of money. For the treasury there are two solutions (a) increase interest rate and (b) borrow on the shorter end of the curve. The first, has hardly started, but the second is already in full force, the US Treasury has multiplied its T-bil auction for less than 180 days…
If you are a bondholder, and you need to hold US bonds for allocation purposes, what you do is go to the short end of the market…the long end could end up being very expensive!
Comments