“WE’RE GOING TO INCREASE THE BUYBACK” — BESSENT DOUBLES DOWN AS $40 TRILLION IN DEBT SPOOKS THE BOND MARKET

The United States owes $40 trillion, and on Thursday the man who runs the Treasury told CNBC he is going to buy back more of the government’s own debt. Not two billion dollars a round, like before. Four billion, as a floor, maybe more. He said it plain: “We’re going to increase the size of the buyback.” Call it what it is. Long bonds had climbed near 5.34 percent, the highest since 2007, because buyers were asking a fair question: can Washington really pay this back, or is it just rolling the balance forward forever? The answer from the Treasury boss was not to cut spending or raise real revenue. It was to step into the market and buy up the bonds nobody else wanted at that price. That works, for a while. Yields fell the moment he spoke. But propping up demand for your own IOUs does not make the debt smaller. It is the government co-signing its own loan. Bitcoin, meanwhile, sat above $72,000, needing no buyback and no committee meeting to hold its price. A promise you keep rewriting isn’t a promise.