The time Scott Bessent tried to outsmart the bond market

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Scott Bessent joined the Trump administration last year armed with formidable experience in markets, the widespread respect of Wall Street and limitless confidence.

Bessent has brought to his role as Treasury secretary and President Donald Trump’s point man on the economy the same swagger that famously allowed him to help George Soros “break” the Bank of England in 1992 by betting bet heavily against the pound. The trade forced the UK to abandon its efforts to prop up the currency – and netted Soros more than a billion dollars.

Bessent has recently dared traders to cross him by boldly declaring, “I am the house now.” He’s dismissed criticism by saying if “some of the Bloomberg Terminal bros are unhappy with what I’m doing, well, that’s too bad.” And he’s promised to ease the cost of money by driving down bond yields.

But his efforts to outsmart the bond market – the deepest and most important market on the planet – have not lived up to the hype. If anything, critics say his efforts have backfired.

“The data is clear. He’s added accelerant to the fire. He’s had the exact opposite impact that he wanted,” said Tim Mahedy, CEO of Access/Macro and a former official at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the International Monetary Fund.

Early last year, Bessent said he wanted to lower the all-important 10-year yield below 4%. Instead, the opposite has happened, with the benchmark rate briefly climbing above 5% on Monday for the first time in three years.

With rates rising uncomfortably high last month, Bessent surprised many on Wall Street with a controversial intervention that ultimately tripled Treasury buybacks.

But the plan has not been effective. Bond yields are higher now than before Bessent intervened, an increase that will make it more expensive for consumers to get a mortgage, mom-and-pop shops to get a small business loan and for Washington to borrow.

“It massively flopped,” Hardika Singh, economic strategist at Fundstrat, an investment research firm, told CNN earlier this month. “If anything, this may have made the problem worse. Bessent showed his hand. To investors, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s worried.’ We should be too.”

The Bessent move drew criticism from his mentor, legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller, who penned an ( AI-assisted ) op-ed in The Wall Street Journal warning that efforts to suppress yields would backfire.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a top economist under President George W. Bush, said Bessent’s move to control yields was “doomed to fail” because it didn’t address the elephant in the room: Trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

“I don’t think you can fool mother nature. You’ve got to fix the fundamentals,” said Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank.

Of course, America had a mountain of debt long before Bessent took office. Both parties share blame for the budget mess.

But Trump and Bessent pledged to clean up that mess, in part by driving the federal deficit down to 3% of GDP. Instead, budget deficits are running at about twice that level – even though unemployment is low and the White House argues the economy is on fire.

“They’ve made it worse. There’s no way around that,” said Holtz-Eakin.

David Wessel, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said the bond market intervention of this type would only work if there was A.) a serious problem in how markets are functioning and B.) it’s followed up by policies aimed at fixing the government budget.

“But this isn’t a market-functioning-style emergency. It’s a politically inconvenient increase in yields,” Wessel said.

Inconvenient because the higher bond yields go, the more out of reach the American dream is. Mortgage rates , which closely track the 10-year Treasury yield, are now at the highest level since June 2025.

Of course, Bessent has been dealt a tough hand and forced to defend Trump’s unpopular and, at times, inflationary, policies.

Last year, his boss launched a global trade war that freaked out the bond market and undid progress on inflation. (Bessent is credited with convincing Trump last spring to pause those global tariffs, a move that set off an epic rally in bonds and especially stocks).

This year, his boss waged a military war with Iran that continues to exacerbate America’s cost-of-living troubles and rattle the bond market.

“He’s been taken for a ride by Trump’s chaos policy,” said Access/Macro’s Mahedy.

The other problem is that Treasury’s powers, while vast, are more limited than those of the Federal Reserve.

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Bessent’s bond market intervention appeared to take a page out of the Fed’s crisis playbook by creating a backstop to ease market jitters. That’s similar to what then-Fed chairs Ben Bernanke did during the 2008 financial crisis and Jerome Powell during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Bessent is trapped by the system. The Fed can just hit the ‘M’ button on the keyboard and create money out of thin air,” said Mahedy. “But Treasury doesn’t have that same power to create money. Bessent’s got to find it and what he’s promised are drops in the bucket.”

Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, notes that the $6 billion in buybacks Bessent has promised are “little more than a rounding error” in the $32 trillion Treasury market.

“The Bond Vigilantes are daring Bessent to use the bazooka in his toolkit,” Yardeni wrote in a note to clients last week.

Even as the bond markets have moved against him, Bessent has continued his trademark confidence.

Last week, Bessent defended his intervention in the Japanese currency market by warning traders he has intel they don’t.

“I have asymmetric information… You can bet against me if you want,” he said at a fireside chat at Southern Methodist University.

Holtz-Eakin expressed surprise at Bessent’s brash comments.

“It’s unwise. He’s been on the other side. He broke the pound. You don’t bait people like that. It’s not a good move,” he said.

CNN’s David Goldman contributed to this report.

朱莉娅·德马雷·尼金森/美联社

斯科特·贝森特去年加入特朗普政府，他拥有丰富的市场经验、华尔街的广泛尊重和无限的自信。

贝森特担任财政部长和唐纳德·特朗普总统的经济顾问时，也展现出了同样的傲慢自大。这种傲慢自大曾让他于1992年帮助乔治·索罗斯通过大量做空英镑“击垮”了英格兰银行。这一交易迫使英国放弃了支撑英镑的努力，并为索罗斯带来了超过10亿美元的收益。

贝森特最近大胆宣称“我现在就是庄家”，以此挑战交易员们的权威。对于批评，他不屑一顾，称“如果彭博终端的某些人对我的做法不满意，那也没办法”。他还承诺将通过降低债券收益率来减轻资金成本。

但他试图智胜债券市场——全球规模最大、最重要的市场——的努力并未达到预期效果。批评人士甚至认为，他的努力适得其反。

“数据很清楚。他火上浇油，结果适得其反，” Access/Macro 首席执行官、旧金山联邦储备银行和国际货币基金组织前官员蒂姆·马赫迪 (Tim Mahedy) 表示。

去年年初，贝森特曾表示希望将至关重要的10年期国债收益率降至4%以下。然而，事与愿违，基准利率周一短暂攀升至5%以上，创下三年来新高。

上个月利率飙升至令人不安的高位，贝森特采取了一项颇具争议的干预措施，最终使美国国债回购规模增加了两倍，这令华尔街许多人感到惊讶。

但这项计划并未奏效。债券收益率目前高于贝森特干预之前，这一增长将使消费者获得抵押贷款、小型企业获得小额商业贷款以及华盛顿的借贷成本更高。

“这完全失败了，”投资研究公司Fundstrat的经济策略师哈迪卡·辛格（Hardika Singh）本月初告诉CNN。“如果说有什么影响的话，那就是这可能让问题变得更糟了。贝森特暴露了他的底牌。对投资者来说，这就像是，‘我的天哪，他担心了。’我们也应该担心。”

贝森特的举动招致了他的导师、传奇投资人斯坦利·德鲁肯米勒的批评，德鲁肯米勒在《华尔街日报》上发表了一篇（由人工智能辅助撰写的）评论文章，警告说，压制收益率的努力将会适得其反。

乔治·W·布什总统时期的首席经济学家道格拉斯·霍尔茨-埃金表示，贝森特控制收益率的举措“注定失败”，因为它没有解决房间里的大象：数以万亿美元计的赤字，一眼望不到边。

“我认为你无法欺骗大自然。你必须从根本上解决问题，”中间偏右的智库“美国行动论坛”主席霍尔茨-伊金说道。

当然，早在贝森特就任总统之前，美国就背负着沉重的债务。两党都对预算混乱负有责任。

但特朗普和贝森特承诺要收拾残局，部分措施是将联邦赤字降至GDP的3%。然而，实际情况却是预算赤字约为这一目标的两倍——尽管失业率很低，白宫也声称经济一片繁荣。

“他们把情况弄得更糟了。这是无法避免的，”霍尔茨-伊金说道。

布鲁金斯学会经济研究高级研究员大卫·韦塞尔表示，这种债券市场干预只有在以下情况下才会奏效：A）市场运作方式存在严重问题；B）随后出台旨在解决政府预算问题的政策。

“但这并不是市场运作方面的紧急情况，而是收益率在政治上令人不快的上升，”韦塞尔说。

这很不方便，因为债券收益率越高，美国梦就越遥不可及。抵押贷款利率与10年期国债收益率密切相关，目前已达到2025年6月以来的最高水平。

当然，贝森特面临着艰难的处境，被迫为特朗普不受欢迎且有时会导致通货膨胀的政策辩护。

去年，他的老板发动了一场全球贸易战，这场贸易战令债券市场陷入恐慌，并抵消了通胀方面的进展。（贝森特被认为在去年春天说服特朗普暂停了这些全球关税，此举引发了债券，尤其是股票市场的史诗级上涨。）

今年，他的老板对伊朗发动了军事战争，这场战争持续加剧美国的生活成本问题，并动摇了债券市场。

“他被特朗普的混乱政​​策耍得团团转，” Access/Macro 的 Mahedy 说。

另一个问题是，财政部的权力虽然巨大，但比美联储的权力要有限得多。

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

贝森特干预债券市场的举措似乎借鉴了美联储应对危机的策略，旨在通过设立后备机制来缓解市场动荡。这与时任美联储主席本·伯南克在2008年金融危机期间以及杰罗姆·鲍威尔在新冠疫情期间的做法类似。

“贝森特被体制束缚住了。美联储只需按下键盘上的‘M’键就能凭空创造货币，”马赫迪说。“但财政部没有同样的造币权力。贝森特必须自己想办法，而他承诺的只是杯水车薪。”

Yardeni Research 总裁 Ed Yardeni 指出，贝森特承诺的 60 亿美元回购计划在 32 万亿美元的国债市场中“只不过是一个四舍五入的误差”。

“邦德义警们正在挑衅贝森特，让他动用工具箱里的火箭筒，”亚德尼上周在给客户的一份备忘录中写道。

即使债券市场对他不利，贝森特依然保持着他一贯的自信。

上周，贝森特为自己干预日本货币市场的行为辩护，他警告交易员，他掌握着他们所不知道的情报。

“我掌握了不对称信息……如果你愿意，你可以和我打赌，”他在南方卫理公会大学的一次炉边谈话中说道。

霍尔茨-伊金对贝森特的鲁莽言论表示惊讶。

“这样做不明智。他以前也经历过这种情况。他打破了纪录。你不能那样挑衅别人。这不是个好主意，”他说。

CNN的戴维·戈德曼对本报道亦有贡献。