Stanford's Duffie Says U.S. Debt Glut Outpaces Dealer Capacity

斯坦福大学Duffie：美债供应过剩已超出交易商承接能力 激增的国债规模与企业发债竞争正在压垮交易商的资产负债表，并迫使市场依赖对价格敏感的相机抉择型投资者，进而推高长期美债收益率。 在杰克逊霍尔现场，Tracy Alloway和Joe Weisenthal与斯坦福大学金融学教授Darrell Duffie就长期美债收益率的急剧攀升展开了对话。Duffie解释了庞大的公共债务供给、外国央行需求的局限以及企业借贷竞争如何推高了收益率，同时分析了财政部长Scott Bessent扩大的债券回购计划及政府市场干预的局限性。他还探讨了美联储主席Kevin Warsh缩减资产负债表的目标，详细阐述了银行法定准备金等结构性制约因素，并提出了资产负债匹配策略。 杰克逊霍尔研讨会的非官方核心议题是美债收益率的急剧攀升，以及财政部与美联储政策之间的相互作用。 (0:00) 由于国债规模大幅激增，美国国债的供应已超出了一级交易商的资产负债表承载能力。 (4:30) 由于外国央行等非相机抉择型买家触及承载上限，对价格敏感的私人投资者开始索要更高的收益率溢价。 (4:30) 除政府债务外，科技巨头为筹资建设AI基础设施而进行的大规模债券发行也推高了收益率。 (7:30) 长端收益率的攀升主要受供需真实失衡驱动，而非通胀预期上升所致。 (7:30)

Stanford University finance professor Darrell Duffie argues that the surge in long-term U.S. government bond yields stems from structural supply-demand imbalances and primary dealer balance sheet constraints rather than heightened inflation expectations. Consequently, administrative interventions such as Treasury buybacks and maturity shortening offer limited relief and introduce serious fiscal risks. Structural Debt Growth and Intermediation Bottlenecks (4:30) Duffie notes that total U.S. debt has surged from roughly $18 trillion a decade ago to over $31 trillion, expanding at an estimated pace of $2 trillion annually. This flood of sovereign debt—alongside nearly $1 trillion in borrowing from corporate technology hyperscalers funding artificial intelligence infrastructure—competes for the same pool of global fixed-income capital. Because non-discretionary buyers like foreign central banks have reached their capacity limits, the market must increasingly rely on price-sensitive discretionary investors, including hedge funds, mutual funds, and pension funds, who demand higher yields to absorb supply. Crucially, Duffie observes that market-implied inflation expectations have remained stable, proving that yields are being driven by pure supply-demand dynamics rather than inflation panic. While standard market liquidity indicators like bid-ask spreads and market depth remain within normal ranges, the sheer scale of issuance continually threatens to outpace the intermediation capacity of primary dealer balance sheets. Buyback Limits and Refinancing Volatility Risks (20:00) In response to 30-year yields exceeding 5%, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expanded the Treasury's bond buyback program and adjusted issuance toward short-term bills. Duffie characterizes this as a "micro twist" designed to signal that 5%+ yields are excessive, but argues that a few billion dollars in buybacks cannot fundamentally reshape the yield curve. Citing his research with Federal Reserve Bank of New York economists Michael Fleming and Orr Shachar and Stanford doctoral student Sam Witherly, Duffie explains that buybacks are primarily intended to improve liquidity by absorbing illiquid, off-the-run "odd lots" and replacing them with benchmark debt, not capping broad market rates. Duffie cautions against attempting to suppress long-term yields by continuously shifting new issuance into short-term bills. While the U.S. currently maintains a sound average debt maturity profile of about six years, overly relying on short-term funding heightens refinancing frequency and leaves government interest expenses vulnerable to rate fluctuations. Referencing the 1992 British pound crisis, Duffie stresses that governments lack the financial firepower to defeat macro trends if investors determine fair yields belong higher. Balance Sheet Mechanics and Reserve Stickiness (29:00) Examining Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's intent to shrink the central bank's balance sheet, Duffie highlights that assets and liabilities must contract dollar-for-dollar. Because liabilities like physical currency in circulation cannot be forcibly withdrawn and the Treasury General Account is dictated by government cash flow, commercial bank reserves are the only balance sheet liability that can realistically be reduced. However, returning to a pre-2008 environment where banks held negligible reserves is structurally unfeasible. Modern post-crisis liquidity regulations require extensive high-quality liquid buffers, and the Fed now pays full market interest on reserves. Invoking the 2017 research of Viral Acharya and Raghuram Rajan, Duffie explains the "ratchet effect": successive rounds of quantitative easing have conditioned commercial banks to rely on safe, interest-bearing reserves for routine payment clearing and compliance. Draining these reserves too aggressively risks provoking market friction and severe funding volatility. Restructuring Fed Assets to Mitigate Interest Exposure (33:00) Rather than attempting a severe, disruptive reduction in aggregate balance sheet size, Duffie anticipates that the Fed's review task force—including Jeremy Stein, Raghuram Rajan, and Karen Dynan—will recommend restructuring the composition of Fed assets. Specifically, the task force may advocate shifting Fed asset holdings away from long-duration Treasuries and into short-term Treasury bills. This rebalancing would establish a direct asset-liability hedge for the central bank. Under current arrangements, when the Fed raises policy rates to curb inflation, its interest payments to commercial banks on reserves increase immediately while returns on its long-term fixed assets remain flat. Matching floating-rate Treasury bill assets one-for-one against interest-bearing bank reserve liabilities shields the Fed from volatile interest expense mismatches, while remaining long-term bonds can safely back non-interest-bearing physical paper currency. Duffie concludes that soaring Treasury yields reflect inescapable supply realities: a compounding national debt and massive capital competition outstripping balance sheet intermediation capacity. While targeted balance sheet restructuring and off-the-run buybacks can improve institutional plumbing, macroeconomic market forces remain beyond the control of official price-capping strategies.

斯坦福大学金融学教授 Darrell Duffie 指出，近期美国长期国债收益率飙升的根本动力并非通胀失控，而是巨额国债净供给与交易商有限承载力之间的结构性失衡；财政部试图通过回购和短债置换压制长端利率不仅难以扭转宏观趋势，反而会显著积聚政府利息支出的再融资风险。 债务供需失衡与长期资本池争夺 (4:30) Duffie 阐述称，美国公共债务规模已从十年前的约 18 万亿美元膨胀至当前的 31 万亿美元，且以每年约 2 万亿美元的赤字速度持续增加，这种供给扩张正在压垮一级交易商资产负债表的做市中介能力。与此同时，外国央行等传统非价格敏感型买家的持债比例已达上限，迫使财政部转向对收益率要求极高的对冲基金、共同基金、保险机构和养老金等自由裁量型宏观投资者。30 年期美债收益率突破 5% 正反映了此类边际买家所要求的更高风险溢价。 此外，长期固定收益资本池还受到科技巨头人工智能基建发债的挤占。大型科技 hyperscalers 累计发行了接近 1 万亿美元的企业债以支持算力扩张，尽管主权债务规模远大于企业债，但二者争夺的是同一批长久期固定收益配置资金。Duffie 强调，目前市场内含的通胀预期保持相对稳定，说明长期收益率的大幅上行主要由纯粹的供需失衡驱动，而非对恶性通胀的恐慌。 财政部干预局限与发债短端化风险 (20:00) 面对高昂的付息压力，财政部长 Scott Bessent 试图通过扩大回购并增加短期国库券（T-bills）发行以压制长端收益率，Duffie 将此举定性为规模仅数十亿美元的“微观扭曲”（micro twist），其自身体量根本不足以持久改变万亿级国债市场的收益率曲线。Duffie 警告称，如果财政部试图强行划定收益率红线（例如将 30 年期收益率强行压低在 4.99% 以下）并全面转向 2 年期或 5 年期发债，将导致美国债务期限大幅短端化，迫使政府以波动的市场利率高频展期，进而造成财政利息支出的剧烈日度波动。 Duffie 援引 1992 年英国政府动用官方储备抵抗英镑贬值最终惨败的历史案例指出，主权机构缺乏以强力扭转宏观市场趋势的最终财力。目前美国国债平均到期期限维持在约 6 年的相对稳健水平，但若市场认定收益率合理中枢在 6%，财政部若执意通过缩短期限对抗债券义警，将承担极高的再融资风险。此外，日本央行为支撑日元而可能实施的美债抛售，亦是潜在推高美债供给压力的外部隐患。 国债回购微观机制与市场流动性现实 (22:00) 针对财政部宣布定于 9 月 9 日正式启动的扩大回购操作，Duffie 结合其与纽约联储经济学家 Michael Fleming、Orr Shachar 及斯坦福博士生 Sam Witherly 的联合实证研究指出，该项目的制度本意是微观流动性维护。前财政部助理部长 Josh Frost 设立该机制的初衷是清理那些交易停滞、淤积在交易商资产负债表上且交易价格低于平滑曲线的老旧非基准国债（off-the-run odd lots），并通过发行流动性更佳的新基准债进行替换，在为纳税人实现“低买高卖”收益的同时释放交易商做市容量。 然而，Duffie 确认当前美债市场的常规流动性指标——包括买卖价差、市场深度及交易商承载能力——均处于健康的正常历史区间之内。节目讨论指出，财政部近期的干预并非因微观流动性枯竭而起，而是 Scott Bessent 凭借其宏观对冲基金背景，将高收益率视作具有吸引力的入场买点并展开的主动干预，但该操作在性质上更接近外汇干预而非微观流动性修复。 美联储缩表硬约束与准备金棘轮效应 (29:00) 关于新任美联储主席 Kevin Warsh 希望通过大幅缩减资产负债表以降低央行市场干预并防范财政主导的构想，Duffie 指出缩表在资产负债会计上面临严苛限制。美联储资产端的压缩必须在负债端实现美元对美元的等额扣减；但负债端中，财政部一般账户（TGA）由政府财政运营决定，流通中的纸币现金无法强制回收，唯一可被实质削减的仅有商业银行在联储的准备金存款。 然而，现代审慎监管与准备金付息机制形成了制度性阻碍。Duffie 引用 Viral Acharya 与 Raghuram Rajan（2017 年）提出的“棘轮效应”解释称，在多轮量化宽松后，商业银行已高度依赖全额支付市场利息的准备金来满足流动性缓冲与清算要求，强行激进抽取准备金将诱发严重的市场动荡。Duffie 预计，由 Jeremy Stein、Raghuram Rajan 和 Karen Dynan 组成的联储工作组未来的主要建议将聚焦于资产期限匹配：即通过增持短期国库券以一一对应准备金负债，构建天然的浮动利率对冲，以化解加息周期中联储资产负债表的财务失衡。 Duffie 的核心结论表明，本轮美债收益率上行受主权债务供需失衡主导，财政部通过回购或短债替代策略无法在宏观层面长期对抗市场力量，持续发行动辄数万亿美元的短债反将加剧财政利息的再融资脆弱性；与此同时，受制于商业银行对准备金流动性的深层制度依赖，美联储未来在缩表问题上的现实路径将转向资产负债期限结构的精准匹配，而非激进缩减总体规模。

## Background 本期节目由彭博社（Bloomberg）于 2026 年 9 月 3 日发布在播客平台，音频时长约 36 分钟。节目简介指出，全球债券收益率升至 2008 年以来高位，30年期美债一度触及 5%，就在财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）意外扩大回购、美联储新主席凯文·沃什（Kevin Warsh）在杰克逊霍尔发表鹰派演讲之际，主持人邀请斯坦福大学教授达雷尔·达菲（Darrell Duffie）共同探讨美债收益率飙升的深层推手及缩减美联储资产负债表的挑战。 ## TL;DR 节目围绕 30 年期美债收益率逼近 5% 的宏观困局展开深度研判，达菲教授指出推高长端利率的核心并非通胀失控或科技巨头发债挤出，而是美债规模从 18 万亿膨胀至 31 万亿以上导致的严重主权债务供需失衡与边际买家结构变迁。达菲分析了财政部国债回购（Buybacks）清理流动性“碎屑”的本职与贝森特试图干预定价的局限，并结合 1992 年英镑危机与 1951 年美联储-财政部协议，警示财政主导与对抗市场定价的巨大风险。此外，达菲深入剖析了美联储负债端中准备金受监管要求制约的“棘轮效应”，指出沃什想重返 2005 年的缩表设想在实操上极难成立，未来改革更可能聚焦于以短期国库券替代长期国债的资产久期结构调整。 ## Atmosphere & style 录制现场位于怀俄明州杰克逊霍尔年会的户外，在阴雨乍晴的清爽氛围与轻松风趣的开场寒暄中，迅速切入全球宏观金融领域最紧绷的神经。主持人特雷西与乔的幽默调侃、默契互捧，与达菲教授条理清晰、抽丝剥茧的学院派拆解形成了绝妙平衡。整场对话既有严密的理论推演和思想实验，又充斥着对冲基金操盘手本能、反乌托邦科幻以及加密货币“粉尘”等生动隐喻，在专业、理智且略带戏剧张力的语调中，为听众呈现了一场高智商、高密度的顶级宏观对谈。 ## Bulletin - `02:18` 30年期美国国债收益率一度触及5%，美债天量发行（存量达32万亿美元且每年净增约2万亿美元）引发纯粹的供需错配，外国央行配置饱和迫使市场依赖对冲基金等收益敏感型边际买家接盘。 - `16:45` 财政部长斯科特·贝森特以流动性为由扩大国债回购，实质是通过买入非基准老券（Odd Lots）传递收益率偏高的政策信号，但规模有限（数十亿美元量级），难以根本对抗宏观市场趋势。 - `30:00` 美联储新任主席凯文·沃什推动缩表，但受制于负债端结构（TGA与纸币现金难以削减、银行准备金存在监管棘轮效应），未来政策更可能转向优化资产久期结构（多配短债以对冲付息成本）。 - `15:15` 美联储坚决防范“财政主导”风险，极力避免重蹈1951年美联储-财政部协议时被迫实施收益率曲线控制（YCC）的制度冲突覆辙。 ## Key takeaways - `11:25` 长端美债收益率飙升的核心诱因并非长期通胀预期失控，而是源于美国财政赤字膨胀带来的天量主权债务供给与有限承载力之间的供需错配。 - `07:44` 美债市场规模在过去十年内从18万亿美元激增至31万亿至32万亿美元，其绝对量的庞大突破了临界点，正推动长期收益率经历剧烈的均值回归。 - `06:04` 作为传统买方的外国央行美债持仓已达合意上限，新增天量国债只能由对冲基金、商业银行和险资等自主型边际买家吸纳，迫使市场提供更高期限溢价补偿。 - `10:00` AI超大规模云服务商（Hyperscalers）的发债规模（未来几年预计约1万亿美元）远低于每年新增2万亿美元的美债净供给，现实中是财政部在挤出其他所有借款人。 - `15:15` 美联储对收益率曲线控制（YCC）极其警惕，1951年《美联储-财政部协议》的历史教训促使央行竭力避免再次沦为政府赤字融资的被动工具。 - `22:15` 财政部扩大国债回购在机制上属于清理流动性较差的老旧非基准券（Odd Lots），以实现做市商资产负债表减负并获取折价套利，当前常规规模仅数局数十亿美元，无法扮演危机兜底角色。 - `20:00` 若财政部试图通过大举发行短债置换长债来强行设定5%收益率红线，将缩短平均债务到期久期（目前约6年），极大地增加政府利息支出的再融资利率风险。 - `31:36` 美联储负债端中，财政部一般账户（TGA）与流通现金无法被动削减，而存款准备金作为银行满足流动性覆盖率（LCR）的“瑞士军刀”已产生棘轮效应，导致缩表举步维艰。 - `33:14` 美联储专家工作组未来更可能建议调整资产构成，即削减长期国债持仓并置换为短期国库券（T-bills），以使资产端回报与准备金付息利率实现1:1自然对冲。 - `35:10` 期限溢价客观反映了长短期资金的定价差异与风险补偿要求，在赤字无边际扩张的背景下，债券供给洪峰正在直接推升全曲线的远端风险溢价。 ## Detailed walkthrough ### `00:00` 节目开场与好莱坞线下录制预告 在节目正式开始前，主持人和赞助商介绍了包括商业支付与企业级 AI 工具的发展，并宣布《Odd Lots》将于 9 月 17 日在好莱坞佛蒙特剧院（Vermont Theatre）举办现场录制活动，届时将有多位重要嘉宾到场展开深度对话。 ### `02:18` 杰克逊霍尔年会现场：美债收益率飙升与美联储、财政部的微妙博弈 主持人 Tracy Allaway 与 Joe Weisenthal 正在怀俄明州杰克逊霍尔（Jackson Hole）全球央行年会现场进行户外录制。两人打趣道，当地一整天都阴雨连绵、体感凉爽，偏偏在开录的一瞬间阳光破云而出、气温骤升，或许正预示着当下火热的宏观议题。 本届杰克逊霍尔年会的官方主题虽然是“支付领域的金融创新”（financial innovation in payments），但在两位主持人看来，现场私下真正席卷全场、令所有人寝食难安的非官方主题，绝对是长端美债收益率的不可思议飙升以及美联储的应对之道。30年期美国国债收益率一度触及 5% 的大关。在背景中，美联储新任主席渴望确立自身威信，成立了专门的工作组重新审视美联储的沟通机制和缩表路径；与此同时，美国财政部却在另一端大举买回长期国债以试图压低长端利率。美联储与财政部似乎正在形成某种“逆流而行”的政策博弈。 ### `04:22` 斯坦福教授达雷尔·达菲登场：国债市场的“管网”与容量极限 为了理清这一兼具宏观政策与微观市场结构的复杂局面，节目请来了斯坦福大学金融学教授达雷尔·达菲（Darrell Duffie）。达菲长期深耕债券市场微观结构与金融管道研究，曾在 2023 年杰克逊霍尔年会上发表过关于如何修复美债流动性的重磅论文。 当被问及“支付系统与美债收益率飙升究竟有何联系”时，达菲指出两者并非割裂：在 2020 年 3 月新冠疫情引发的流动性海啸中，整个美债市场曾陷入深度失灵，最终迫使美联储紧急介入入场“接盘”，清理华尔街大型主交易商（Primary Dealers）拥堵的资产负债表，才得以恢复债券流转。当时美债收益率剧烈跳升并伴随罕见的极端波动。达菲曾在彼时预言，如果承接天量国债的管道没有本质改善，交易商的资产负债表必将再次不堪重负。不过达菲也坦承，尽管当前美债交易量规模极为惊人，交易商目前似乎仍有承载空间，这或许得益于资本监管约束的边际调整，或是部分交易商在此期间补充了资本。 ### `06:04` 达菲的思想实验：当30年期美债破5%，边际买家在哪里？ 面对 30 年期美债收益率站在 5% 以上的高位，达菲直言：“如果我是美国财政部长，这个数字直接告诉我一件事：美国正在为利息支出支付天文数字，我必须竭尽全力把收益率压下来。”但问题在于，财政部长究竟能有什么手段？ 达菲随即提出一个极具启发性的“经济学思想实验”来解释为什么收益率居高不下： - 假设通胀预期稳定、通胀风险已基本消除； - 假设美国主权债务完全没有违约风险； - 假设 Tracy 经营着一家宏观对冲基金，资产负债表上有足够空间，并且目前已经以 5.3% 的收益率配置了 200 亿美元的 10 年期美债。 - 此时财政部打来电话，询问她是否愿意以同样的价格再多买 100 亿美元。 达菲分析道，即使这种无风险资产极具吸引力，Tracy 也绝不会轻易买单，因为“你手里持有的已经是你在 5.3% 收益率下最优选择的额度；要逼你再多吃进 100 亿，市场就必须提供更高的收益率补偿。”达菲指出，当前市场的核心瓶颈在于买方结构的根本转移： - **外国央行**：早已配置到了合意上限，多年来并未同比例增持美债； - **外国私人投资者**：整体购买速度远远落后于美债发行规模的膨胀； - **自由裁量型边际买家**：共同基金、对冲基金、商业银行、养老金和保险公司等对收益率高度敏感。面对源源不断供应的“安全资产”，只有在风险溢价或收益率补偿足够诱人时，它们才愿意继续扩充资产负债表来接盘。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 达菲美债边际买方吸收逻辑 accDescr: 展示海外官方机构需求见顶后，美债天量增量只能依赖对冲基金等收益敏感型买家，从而推高收益率的过程 subgraph 供给端 ["债务供给爆炸"] Gov["美国财政赤字激增<br/>天量新发国债"] end subgraph 需求端分化 ["买方力量变迁"] CB["外国央行 / 传统主权机构<br/>已达配置上限，停滞不前"] Sens["边际投资人 (对冲基金/险资/资管)<br/>资产负债表空间有限"] end subgraph 价格传导 ["收益率形成"] Dem["必须提供更高收益补偿<br/>才愿吸纳额外头寸"] Yield["长端美债收益率持续攀升<br/>(30年期突破5%)"] end Gov -->|大量发行| CB Gov -->|被迫转向| Sens Sens --> Dem Dem --> Yield ``` ### `07:44` 资产竞争与供给洪峰：从 18 万亿到 31 万亿美元的规模膨胀 针对达菲的思想实验，Joe 提出了一个衍生问题：对冲基金的资产负债表并非只买国债，美债实际上是在与各类高回报风险资产竞争。从英伟达（NVIDIA）等科技巨头到韩国半导体股票，全球高风险资产表现极为耀眼，科技巨头（Hyperscalers）本身也在发债市场上大量抢夺固定收益资金，这是否促成了美债收益率的走高？ 达菲认同资产竞争和企业债（特别是巨型科技公司基建发债）的分流效应，但他强调，真正的始作俑者依然是政府赤字： - **赤字无边际**：不仅是美国，全球主要发达经济体的赤字和债务占 GDP 比例都处于惊人高位，且完全看不到收缩的尽头。 - **历史尺度的颠覆**：过去国际货币基金组织（IMF）曾警告 60% 的债务与 GDP 之比是不可逾越的红线；如今包括法国在内的主要经济体该比例已全面迈向 100%。 - **不可承受之量**：有人反驳称“2018 年或 2019 年大家也是这么警告债务风险的，日本也是几十年高债务但利率依然下行，为何偏偏现在利率发生逆转？”达菲给出了核心数据：短短十年前，美国国债市场规模大约只有 18 万亿美元，而如今已经膨胀至 **31 万亿美元**。这不是故事变了，而是“纯粹的绝对量”（pure volume）突破了临界点。正如达菲在午餐时与著名经济学家肯尼斯·罗格夫（Kenneth Rogoff）探讨的那样，长端收益率在经历多年的非理性压低后，正在经历剧烈的“均值回归”。 ### `10:00` 超大规模科技巨头与美债洪流：谁在挤出谁？ 在探讨驱动长端债券收益率走高的因素时，市场上有一种流行的观点：正在大举建设 AI 算力基础设施的超大规模云服务商（Hyperscalers）正在发行海量长期债券，从而产生了挤出效应，与美国国债争夺资本。达雷尔·达菲（Darrell Duffie）对此给出了截然相反的判断。他指出，并非科技巨头挤出了财政部，而是财政部在严重挤出其他所有人。虽然超大规模科技公司在未来几年内可能累计发行约 1 万亿美元的债务，但与美国国债高达 32 万亿美元的体量、以及每年新增 2 万亿美元的净供给相比，科技债的规模根本微不足道。全球财政部与立法机构正在向市场源源不断地倾倒主权债务，而最终需要接盘的往往是同一批养老基金和保险机构。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 国债供给洪流对买方市场的挤出示意图 accDescr: 展示巨量主权债券如何挤占有限的机构投资者资金池，进而推高收益率。 subgraph Supply["供给端：海量久期发售"] USG["美国财政部<br/>（32万亿存量 + 每年2万亿新增）"] GlobalGov["全球其他主权财政机构"] BigTech["AI 超大规模云厂商<br/>（预计约1万亿美元债务）"] end subgraph Demand["需求端：资产负债表承载力"] Buyers["同一批机构买家<br/>（养老金、保险公司、自主型投资者）"] end USG -->|"压倒性挤出效应"| Buyers GlobalGov --> Buyers BigTech --> Buyers Buyers -->|"要求更高期限溢价补偿"| YieldRise["长端债券收益率持续攀升"] ``` 这一讨论随即引申出一段颇具黑色幽默的科幻畅想：如果庞大的政府主权债务最终导致政府信誉与财政体系崩溃，建造尖端 AI 算力的科技巨头是否会成为新的“主权实体”？主持人打趣提到，这正是玛格丽特·阿特伍德（Margaret Atwood）反乌托邦小说中的场景——商业跨国巨头取代国家政权，居民完全生活在科技公司的园区内，享受其提供的全套配给。未来的无风险基准利率或许不再是美国国债收益率，而会变成“Claude 收益率”和“Gemini 收益率”。 - 美国国债现有规模达 32 万亿美元，且仍以每年约 2 万亿美元的速度持续膨胀。 - 预计全球超大规模云服务商未来几年的发债规模约为 1 万亿美元，其对久期资金的吸收远小于政府赤字带来的融资供给。 --- ### `11:25` 通胀还是供需？长端美债收益率攀升的真正推手 针对长端利率飙升，另一种经典的宏观解释是通胀：过去几年通胀率持续高于美联储目标，即便经历了一轮激进的加息周期仍显顽固，因此市场或许只是在预期更持久的短期高利率。主持人提及约翰·科克伦（John Cochrane）在《物价水平的财政理论》（The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level）中提出的观点，即长期来看财政赤字、通胀与债券价格密不可分。然而，达菲从实际市场定价的角度否定了“通胀恐慌论”。 达菲解释道，观察名义国债与通胀保值债券（TIPS）所推导出的远期隐含通胀预期（Forward Implied Inflation），市场并没有发出任何通胀失控的警报。尽管美联储官员凯文·沃什（Kevin Warsh）在杰克逊霍尔会议上强调抗击通胀仍有许多硬仗要打，但驱动 10 年期、20 年期与 30 年期国债投资者的核心逻辑并非长期通胀预期失控，而是纯粹的“供需错配”。过去作为美债最大买家的海外央行其资产配置已近饱和，不再增加购买；新增的巨量国债必须由国内自主决策型投资者（Domestic Discretionary Investors）吞下，而这些私营投资者要想吸纳如此庞大的久期风险，必然要求更高的风险补偿（即期限溢价）。 --- ### `15:15` 财政主导的阴影与 1951 年美联储-财政部协议的教训 随着美债发行的泛滥，央行是否会陷入“财政主导”（Fiscal Dominance）成为了杰克逊霍尔研讨会上人人低声耳语、却极少有人公开挑明的大象。达菲直言，美联储正在竭尽全力地规避财政主导的陷阱，绝不可能与财政部展开任何关于“收益率曲线控制”（YCC）的讨论。 达菲回顾了历史教训：美联储历史上上一次介入收益率曲线控制，最终在 20 世纪 50 年代初演变成极度恶劣的制度冲突，并催生了著名的 1951 年《美联储-财政部协议》（Fed-Treasury Accord）。许多人误以为“协议”（Accord）代表着双方达成了融洽一致，但事实上那是一场极其激烈的政治争斗——当时美联储在财政部的强压下被迫向债市提供支持，几乎是“踢着蹬着、大喊大叫”（kicking and screaming）勉强维持了短暂的收益率上限，随后彻底摆脱了曲线控制的束缚。达菲强调，联邦公开市场委员会（FOMC）将不惜一切代价避免重蹈覆辙，绝不愿再度沦为政府赤字融资的被动工具。 --- ### `16:45` 斯科特·贝森特的国债回购、债券卫士与干预限度 关于政策制定者如何应对收益率上行，讨论转向了美国财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）扩大财政部国债回购计划（Buyback Program）的动作。贝森特对外宣称这一决定是出于“流动性担忧”，但在外界看来，当时的国债市场运行其实相当平稳。达菲分析，从贝森特的发言来看，其真正意图是他认为当前的收益率脱离了基本面、水平“过高”，因此试图借回购向市场传递一个强烈的“信号”（Signal），即美国国债理应享有更低的借贷成本。 然而，这种干预的效果转瞬即逝。市场在消息公布后短暂反弹，但很快便逆转回跌。达菲指出，这生动展示了财政部与庞大债券市场之间的“火力悬殊”。主持人随即联想到政治策略师詹姆斯·卡维尔（James Carville）的名言——如果有来世，他宁愿转世为债券市场，因为它可以威慑所有人。他们还幽默地调侃起此前特朗普关于动用军事手段干预国债市场的玩笑，调侃称卡维尔当年大概没想到“债券卫士”（Bond Vigilantes）有朝一日可能会被轰炸到屈服。 但现实很骨感：即便是强大的美国财政部，在收益率定价上也绝非债券市场的对手。达菲进一步推测，财政部的激进态度不仅体现在国债回购上，也表现在日元干预等跨境金融操作中。美方担心，若日本经济或央行政策出现波折迫使其抛售持有的美国国债，将造成多重压垮效应，进一步重创美债市场并急剧推高美国政府的利息支出。因此，贝森特此举的核心潜台词是明确向市场宣示：面对收益率攀升与外部风险，财政部绝不会坐以待毙，而是要主动下场博弈。 - 斯科特·贝森特动用回购计划旨在发出引导收益率下行的政策信号，但债市强大的自我定价力量让这一干预效果迅速回吐。 - 财政部展现出比以往更加积极的干预主义倾向，一定程度上源于对日本央行潜在减持美债连锁反应的深层防范。 ### `20:00` 财政部能否为收益率“划下红线”？与 1992 年英镑危机的历史镜像 主持人提出一个极其尖锐的大胆设想：如果财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）从根本上坚信当前美债价格不合理，财政部是否可以像央行设定汇率红线那样，公开在 5% 设一道“沙滩红线”？换言之，财政部完全可以大举发行 2 年期短期国债，回购 30 年期国债，只要 30 年期收益率触及 4.99% 就大举扫货，给那些做空美债的“债券义勇军”（Bond Vigilantes）一记惨痛教训。 达雷尔·达菲（Darrell Duffie）对此给出了清醒且严厉的反驳。他指出，这种操作无异于自吞毒药，是加剧美国政府利息支出波动性的危险策略。大幅缩短债务到期期限意味着财政部必须在频繁的拍卖中不断以当前市场利率对债务进行滚续（rollover），每天都要面对最新市价的直接冲击。尽管美国目前的平均债务久期仍在 6 年左右，整体财政状况尚有缓冲，但达菲直言，任何政府都没有强大到仅凭自身资源去扭转宏观市场趋势的程度。 达菲更意味深长地重提了一段极具戏剧性的历史：1992 年英镑危机。当时斯科特·贝森特正是乔治·索罗斯（George Soros）旗下量子基金的核心成员，亲手参与了阻击英镑的经典战役。彼时英国政府竭力动用所有弹药捍卫英镑汇率，结果惨败退场，白白损耗了巨额国家储备。达菲警告称，即便强大如美国财政部，如果整个市场一致认定 30 年期收益率应该走向 6%，财政部也是无力螳臂当车的；强行对抗市场趋势，只会将国家财政暴露在巨大的风险敞口之下。 - **平均债务久期**：美国政府目前的平均债务到期期限约为 6 年，尚处健康区间，但缩短久期会直接放大再融资利率风险。 - **历史宿命论**：贝森特早年曾在索罗斯麾下做空英镑，如今转换身份成为财政主管，却面临同样的经济学规律——主权政府对抗市场大潮往往得不偿失。 --- ### `22:15` 美债回购计划的初衷：清理“碎屑”（Odd Lots）与流动性现实 当被问及其实证研究对财政部回购计划（Buybacks）的实际效果和久期影响有何发现时，达菲透露，他目前正与纽约联储的两位经济学家迈克尔·弗莱明（Michael Fleming）、奥尔·沙哈尔（Or Shachar），以及他在斯坦福大学的博士生萨姆·威彻利（Sam Wycherley）合作开展一项最新课题。该研究基于回购真实数据与交易商（Primary Dealers）资产负债表的换手率数据，旨在厘清回购机制的原始设计目标。 达菲解释道，这一计划的最初目的纯粹是技术性的——清理交易商资产负债表上那些陈旧、缺乏流动性的老旧国债“边角料”或“碎屑”（Odd Lots）。正如前财政部助理部长乔希·弗罗斯特（Josh Frost）此前所阐述的那样，这些非基准老券（off-the-run bonds）交投清淡，不仅淤塞了做市商的资产负债表，而且其交易折价显著低于平滑收益率曲线所指示的公允价值。财政部通过“定期且可预测”（regular and predictable）的节奏回购这些低价旧券，换之以高流动性的新基准券，不仅为美债市场疏通了管道，本质上还为纳税人实现了“低吸高抛”的套利收益。 达菲同时肯定，在发生突发危机时（例如 2020 年 3 月的流动性挤兑，或是英国 2022 年利兹·特拉斯“迷你预算”引发的养老金危机），财政部门亲自下场介入国债市场是完全正当的，不应将救市责任全盘甩给央行。以英国为例，财政部为英格兰银行购买金边债券提供了损失兜底；而美国财政部自身若要动用回购来充当紧急流动性后盾，所需弹药应当是“数以千亿美元计”的规模，绝非最近几周财政部所讨论的区区 40 亿至 80 亿美元。更关键的是，达菲指出，当前从买卖价差（bid-ask spreads）、市场深度到交易商资产负债表等所有经典微观流动性指标来看，美债市场完全正常运转，根本不存在所谓的流动性崩坏。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Treasury Buyback Mechanism and Limits accDescr: Flowchart illustrating normal odd-lot buyback mechanism versus emergency market interventions and constraints. subgraph Routine["常规操作：盘活存量（Josh Frost 框架）"] A["交易商资产负债表淤积<br/>老旧非基准券（Odd Lots）"] --> B["财政部定期、可预测回购<br/>（低价买入老券）"] B --> C["增发新基准国债<br/>（高价卖出新券）"] C --> D["疏通做市商流动性<br/>纳税人实现'低买高卖'"] end subgraph Emergency["危机应对 vs. 现实规模差距"] E["严重市场失灵<br/>（如 2020 年 3 月流动性挤兑）"] --> F["需要千亿美元级强力干预"] G["近期财政部操作<br/>（仅 40 亿至 80 亿美元）"] -.->|"规模有限，仅具信号意义"| F end ``` --- ### `26:40` “微型扭转操作”（Micro Twist）与债务期限缩短的隐忧 主持人对比指出，财政部当前通过增发短债回购长债以压制长端利率的举措，在形态上极像美联储在 2010 年代实施的“扭转操作”（Operation Twist）或量化宽松（QE）；但当时的宏观背景是通胀长期低迷、央行试图刺激再通胀，而现在通胀压力截然不同，这是否意味着财政部在越俎代庖，甚至干涉美联储的紧缩路径？ 达菲回应称，他并不认为财政部此举是在踩美联储的脚趾（stepping on the toes of the Fed）。尽管其机理确实类似于扭转操作，但他将其戏谑地定性为一种“微型扭转”（Micro Twist）——规模仅在数十亿美元左右，除了提供些许政策信号外，在庞大的宏观市场上根本无法真正掀起波澜。主持人随即调侃，“微型扭转”听上去像极了 2000 年代初期那种难喝的廉价低度预调果酒（Alcopop），或者某种老派舞步。 谈及增发短期国库券（T-bills）筹资带来的长远影响，达菲分析，这种做法确实将发行压力转移到了货币市场，并导致整体政府债务期限不断缩短。不过，目前还远未到拉响警报的地步，因为美国政府的平均债务期限甚至还略高于历史平均水平。真正的决定性力量始终在于“常规净发行”（new issuance）的结构，而非回购本身。达菲强调，只有当财政部年复一年地刻意压低长期限国债的发行规模，任由短期负债像滚雪球一样在货币市场堆积数年之久，那才会引发真正的系统性担忧与财政脆弱性。 - **微型扭转 vs. 经典扭转**：2011 年美联储原版扭转操作规模达 4000 亿美元；财政部当前回购量级仅在百亿以内，缺乏实质影响长端收益率的“火力”。 - **期限风险转移**：短端融资压低了当前偿债成本，但以牺牲未来的利率确定性为代价，市场本质是将利率风险转移到了短期流动性市场。 --- ### `29:15` 凯文·沃什（Kevin Warsh）的执念：美联储缘何急于缩表？ 随着话题转向新任美联储主席凯文·沃什（Kevin Warsh）及其履新后组建的各大工作专班（Task Forces）——特别是专门针对美联储资产负债表的审查工作组，主持人邀请达菲“戴上凯文·沃什的帽子”，解读沃什为何如此迫切地想要缩减美联储庞大的资产负债表规模。 达菲幽默地表示自己无法钻进沃什的大脑，但他回顾了沃什在去年三十人小组（Group of Thirty, G30）会议期间发表的重要演讲。达菲直言，那场演讲集中展示了沃什关于央行职能与资产负债表膨胀危害的核心哲学，而沃什对央行资产负债表过度干预金融体系的深切忧虑，正是其后续一系列强硬紧缩立场的逻辑根源。 ### `30:00` 美联储资产负债表的对称困境：负债端为何难以压缩 美联储在金融市场中的庞大足迹引发了越来越多的争议，甚至给人一种正在越界涉足财政政策的错觉。达雷尔·达菲（Darrell Duffie）指出，美联储主席凯文·沃什（Kevin Warsh）急于摆脱这种干预财政的公众印象，而缩减资产负债表正是释放这一信号最直截了当的方式。然而，口号喊起来容易，实际操作却困难重重。特雷西·阿洛韦（Tracy Alloway）敏锐地指出，在经历了多年的量化宽松（QE）之后，人们往往只盯着美联储买入了多少资产，却彻底忽视了负债端——资产负债表必须两端平衡，如果不削减负债，资产端根本无法独自缩水。达菲称赞特雷西得出这一结论的速度快过绝大多数人，并对美联储负债端的各项构成进行了逐一拆解。 如果按照会计恒等式进行一一对应的减法，美联储的负债主要包括三大块：财政部一般账户（TGA）、流通中的纸币现金，以及商业银行在美联储的准备金。达菲打趣道，美联储绝不可能主动打电话给财政部，要求对方把存在美联储里的支票账户余额取走；同样，美联储也不可能在全世界大打广告，恳请持有美元现钞的普通大众主动把纸币上交注销。这意味着，唯一具备实质性压缩空间的项目只有准备金，即商业银行在美联储的存款。然而，以美联储现有的政策工具包来看，要大规模压缩准备金几乎无计可施。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 美联储资产负债表缩减制约机制 accDescr: 展示美联储资产与负债一一对应的压缩限制及准备金依赖 subgraph Assets["资产端 (缩减容易)"] A1["抛售国债 / MBS"] end subgraph Liabilities["负债端 (缩减极难)"] L1["财政部一般账户 (TGA)<br/>无法强令财政部提款"] L2["流通中纸币现金<br/>无法强制民间上交纸币"] L3["银行存款准备金<br/>唯一可压缩项，但缺乏工具且具黏性"] end A1 -.->|"必须 1:1 同步缩减"| Liabilities ``` ### `31:36` 无法重回2005年：流动性监管与准备金的“棘轮效应” 乔·韦森塔尔（Joe Weisenthal）提出了一个直率的疑问：在2008年雷曼兄弟倒闭之前，美联储几乎没有多少超额准备金，如果监管当局下定决心想要回到过去的“黄金岁月”，让银行体系重返2005年的状态，在监管上究竟需要付出什么代价？达菲给出了断然的否定答案：“这绝不可能发生，乔。”他解释称，2005年的流动性监管规则与今天有着天壤之别，且当时美联储不对存款准备金支付利息（IOR）。在零利息的时代，银行持有准备金没有任何动力，宁可将资金拆借到货币市场获取市场化收益；但如今为了控制通胀，美联储被迫向银行支付接近市场利率的准备金利息。 对现代商业银行而言，存款准备金不仅享有完全市场化的无风险利息回报，能够瞬间用于支付清算系统，更是满足各项严苛流动性覆盖率（LCR）监管要求的终极合规利器。达菲形象地将其形容为金融界的“瑞士军刀”——既然完美好用，银行绝不会轻易放手。达菲还提到了维拉尔·阿查里亚（Viral Acharya）与拉古拉姆·拉詹（Raghuram Rajan）于2017年在杰克逊霍尔年会上提出的经典论文：美联储每一次扩表注入准备金，都会引发一种“棘轮效应”（ratchet effect）。商业银行对高流动性准备金产生依赖甚至“成瘾”，一旦美联储试图强行收紧并抽走准备金，金融市场就会陷入剧烈震荡，迫使央行不得不临阵退缩。 - **监管与利息差异**：2005年前准备金无利息，银行积极压低持仓；如今准备金按市场利率付息，成为优质计息资产。 - **合规“瑞士军刀”**：兼具即时支付清算、达标流动性监管指标与锁定无风险收益三重功能。 - **准备金棘轮效应**：扩表容易缩表难，银行准备金需求随供给单向攀升，强推缩表极易引发流动性踩踏。 ### `33:14` 资产组合结构重组预测与美联储的政治自主权 面对沃什缩小资产负债表的执念，由杰里米·斯坦（Jeremy Stein）牵头，拉古拉姆·拉詹和卡伦·戴南（Karen Dynan）共同参与的重磅专家工作组正在研究应对方案。达菲坦言，自己并不掌握工作组的内部动向，但他预计这些极具声望的顶尖学者不会把眼光仅局限在“总量规模”上，而是会着重审视“资产构成”（composition of the assets）。达菲预测，工作组极有可能建议削减美联储持有的长期国债规模，并将其置换为短期国库券（T-bills）。这种资产负债久期匹配的操作，能够大幅降低美联储自身的利息支出波动——当美联储为抗击通胀而提高向商业银行支付的准备金利率时，持有的短期国库券收益也会同步上升，形成一比一的自然对冲；与此同时，抵押贷款支持证券（MBS）预计将继续以自然到期不续做的方式逐步出清。 达菲强调，从纯粹的货币政策功能来看，美联储其实根本不需要大幅缩减资产负债表规模，但它必须在工具箱中储备能够缩表的技术手段。如果正如外界所猜测的那样，这一议题背后充斥着复杂的政治博弈，美联储就绝不能在国会面前陷入被动挨打的境地。一旦国会试图施压逼迫美联储扩表去购买特定财政资产，美联储必须能够拿出切实可行的工具自主调控并压缩资产负债表，以捍卫央行的独立性。这类工具在理论上完全成立，其他部分海外央行也已有所应用，但美联储在实操层面尚未将其开发完善。 ### `35:10` 期限溢价之争：乔的困惑与科克伦-皮亚泽西分解模型 访谈临近尾声，特雷西向达菲提出了一个半开玩笑的“请求”：请帮大家说服乔，让他相信“期限溢价”（Term Premium）是一个极其有用的概念。乔当场承认自己在这件事上是个“粗人”（simple man），在他看来，30年期国债收益率无非就是未来30年隔夜利率的简单加总，而华尔街张口闭口就是无法精确测量的“期限溢价”，甚至连计量模型都频繁失效，却硬要拿“国债投资者承担风险需要补偿”作为说辞。面对乔的怀疑态度，达菲笑着接招，直言期限溢价的概念本身并不难衡量，它客观反映了长期资金与短期资金之间的定价差异，真正的难点在于如何对其进行准确的经济学分解。 达菲解释，长期国债收益率确实包含了对未来短期利率走势的预期路径，而这一预期本身就内生了市场对未来通胀的判断；但在此之上，还必须叠加不可忽视的风险溢价部分。达菲提到了约翰·科克伦（John Cochrane）与莫妮卡·皮亚泽西（Monika Piazzesi）在收益率曲线分解领域的先驱研究，并指出期限溢价并非一成不变，它会随着宏观基本面发生剧烈漂移。其中一个核心驱动力正是前面谈及的美国国债天量发行：当庞大的财政赤字没有丝毫缩减迹象时，源源不断的国债净供给将直接推高整条收益率曲线，并在远端产生更高的风险补偿要求。被达菲“现场科普”后，特雷西调侃乔今天录完播客得带着导师布置的家庭作业回家补课了。 ### `36:20` 播客后记：从财政部5天支出到加密货币的“粉尘”类比 送走达菲之后，特雷西与乔展开了常规的节目复盘。特雷西对达菲提及的美联储财政部一般账户（TGA）感慨万千，她提到市场上常有一项惊人数据：财政部在美联储的现金储备经常仅够维持联邦政府约5天的日常开支。特雷西戏谑道，媒体总喜欢大肆报道“近半数美国普通家庭的储蓄不够支撑3个月生活开销”，可堂堂美国财政部竟然只能支撑5天。乔附和着调侃，财政部的底气在于随时可以发债借钱，但万一特朗普真把债券市场搞砸了，TGA又该如何自处？ 两人随后深入复盘了财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）推出的常规国债回购计划。乔坦言，自己过去一直没完全理解在非流动性危机时期实施回购的制度意义，如今才想通剔除老券（off-the-run）的必要性——市场上飘着大量流动性极差、无人问津的“27年期老券”，财政部定期将其回收清理完全合情合理。乔借用加密货币领域的术语将其比作“粉尘”（dust）：在钱包中经常残留着价值极低（如0.0002枚比特币）、甚至抵不上转账手续费的代币碎屑，积少成多便会演变成难以处置的冗余资产，甚至催生过专门整合“粉尘资产”的创业公司。财政部常规回购的作用正如清道夫扫除美债市场的“粉尘”，但这种常态化机制如今与财政部的市场反应函数交织在一起，正在给美债市场注入全新的复杂变数。 ### `40:00` 贝森特的对冲基金交易员本能与国债回购时机争议 乔·威森塔尔（Joe Weisenthal）与特蕾西·阿洛韦（Tracy Alloway）在访谈结束后继续复盘财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）的政策动机。贝森特声称是为了“市场流动性”才扩大国债回购规模，但正如达雷尔·达菲（Darrell Duffie）所指出的，美债市场的运转实际上相当正常。市场各方随即意识到，贝森特真正的关注点其实是收益率水平——他显然认为当前的收益率过高了。然而，这种表态一旦确立，投资者便会把这一水平视为事实上的干预目标位，紧盯财政部随时进场护盘的信号。乔调侃道，贝森特骨子里可能还是怀念做宏观对冲基金经理的日子，看到收益率冲得太高，本能反应就是“这是一个抄底做多的绝佳交易机会”，就像当年在外汇市场上干预日元一样；操盘此类激进的干预动作，恰恰是他最得心应手的“舒适区”（comfort ground）。 随后两人就这笔“国债交易”的盈亏展开了风趣的讨论。乔提到，截至录音时，美债收益率有所回落，贝森特账面上大概已经“浮盈”（above water）了。特蕾西笑着反驳，自己原本也以为这是一笔大赚的漂亮交易，直到推特（Twitter）上有网友提醒才发现：财政部当时只是发布了公告，实际的国债回购操作要到9月9日才正式开始。乔随即打趣“推特上说的肯定保真”，不过两人一致认同，从市场预期引导的角度来看，这项回购声明的时机确实踩得非常精准，俨然一笔极其成功的宏观大笔交易。最后，特蕾西打趣让听众继续锁定后续节目，共同跟踪这笔“贝森特交易”的成效，并与乔一同向制作团队致谢，宣布本期播客圆满收尾。 - **对冲基金思维的政策干预**：主持团队戏称贝森特将财政部职能当成了宏观对冲基金来运营，面对飙升的30年期国债收益率，更倾向于将其视作价格错配并主动“入场交易”。 - **回购执行日程**：财政部虽然提前发布了扩大回购的重磅声明提振市场，但实际的国债回购采购程序定于9月9日才正式启动。 - **播客团队致谢**：节目结尾鸣谢了《Odd Lots》制作人卡门·罗德里格斯（Carmen Rodriguez）、达谢尔·贝内特（Dashel Bennett）、凯尔·布鲁克斯（Kale Brooks）与凯文·洛萨诺（Kevin Lozano），并邀请听众订阅每日通讯及加入 Discord 社区参与讨论。 ## Notable quotes > `06:04` 如果我是美国财政部长，这个数字直接告诉我一件事：美国正在为利息支出支付天文数字，我必须竭尽全力把收益率压下来。 — 达雷尔·达菲 > `06:04` 你手里持有的已经是你在 5.3% 收益率下最优选择的额度；要逼你再多吃进 100 亿，市场就必须提供更高的收益率补偿。 — 达雷尔·达菲 > `15:15` 踢着蹬着、大喊大叫 — 达雷尔·达菲 > `31:36` 这绝不可能发生，乔。 — 达雷尔·达菲 > `40:00` 这是一个抄底做多的绝佳交易机会 — 乔·威森塔尔 > `26:40` 微型扭转 — 达雷尔·达菲 > `22:15` 定期且可预测 — 达雷尔·达菲 > `20:00` 沙滩红线 — 特雷西·阿洛韦 ## Mentioned Tracy Allaway, Joe Weisenthal, Darrell Duffie, Scott Bessent, Kevin Warsh, Kenneth Rogoff, John Cochrane, James Carville, George Soros, Josh Frost, Michael Fleming, Or Shachar, Sam Wycherley, Jeremy Stein, Raghuram Rajan, Karen Dynan, Viral Acharya, Monika Piazzesi, Carmen Rodriguez, Dashel Bennett, Kale Brooks, Kevin Lozano, Margaret Atwood, Liz Truss, NVIDIA, 美联储, 美国财政部, 英格兰银行, 日本央行, 国际货币基金组织 (IMF), 量子基金, 纽约联储, 三十人小组 (Group of Thirty), 联邦公开市场委员会 (FOMC), 佛蒙特剧院 (Vermont Theatre), Odd Lots, Claude, Gemini, Twitter, Discord ## Video description <p>Global bond yields are at their highest level since 2008, with the 30-year US Treasury touching 5% just before Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a surprise increase of his department's bond buyback program and Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh made his hawkish speech at Jackson Hole. So what's driving yields higher? And what options do policymakers have to bring them down? In this episode we speak with Stanford Professor Darrell Duffie, who's been researching bonds for years, including presenting a paper at Jackson Hole in 2023 about how to fix the US Treasury market. A lot has changed since then, and at this year's Jackson Hole symposium, we caught up with Duffie to talk about everything going on in the bond market, as well as the challenge of shrinking the Fed's balance sheet.&nbsp;</p> <p>Get tickets to see&nbsp;<a href="https://events.bloombergevents.com/event/ODDLOTSLA/summary">Odd Lots live</a> in LA!</p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p> [Source](https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8a94442e-5a74-4fa2-8b8d-ae27003a8d6b/52b31e33-08b2-4ea7-a5d0-b4b9014b34d9/audio.mp3?in_playlist=982f5071-765c-403d-969d-ae27003a8d83)

[6:04] 达雷尔·达菲: 如果我是美国财政部长，这个数字直接告诉我一件事：美国正在为利息支出支付天文数字，我必须竭尽全力把收益率压下来。 [6:04] 达雷尔·达菲: 你手里持有的已经是你在 5.3% 收益率下最优选择的额度；要逼你再多吃进 100 亿，市场就必须提供更高的收益率补偿。 [15:15] 达雷尔·达菲: 踢着蹬着、大喊大叫 [31:36] 达雷尔·达菲: 这绝不可能发生，乔。 [40:00] 乔·威森塔尔: 这是一个抄底做多的绝佳交易机会 [26:40] 达雷尔·达菲: 微型扭转 [22:15] 达雷尔·达菲: 定期且可预测 [20:00] 特雷西·阿洛韦: 沙滩红线

[4:30] Darrell Duffie: If I'm the Secretary of the Treasury, it's telling me that the United States is spending a heck of a lot on interest expense and I need to do what I can to get those yields down. [15:00] Darrell Duffie: Even the mighty U.S. Treasury Department is not as powerful as bond markets when it comes to setting yields.

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I'm Tracy Allaway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. Well, Joe, we are still at Jackson Hole. Yeah. Where the official theme of this year's symposium is financial innovation in payments. However, the unofficial theme has to be what the heck is going on with bond yields and the Federal Reserve, because this whole meeting is coming against a backdrop of higher yields, particularly at the long end. A new Fed chair seems to want to make a mark on the Fed and has started all these different task forces to look at things like comms and balance sheets. And then, of course, we also have a Fed that seems to kind of maybe be operating at cross currents to the U.S. Treasury, given that the Treasury is now buying back longer dated bonds and seemingly suppressing longer dated yields. There's so many different dimensions to what you described, right? So there is the formal technical thing. There is the sort of relationship between the Fed and the Treasury There is the new things going on inside the Fed There obviously the warmth and the economy By the way the sun just came out We recording outside It been rainy and cool all day. Now it suddenly got hot again. Maybe that's a sign. Anyway, that's why it's fun to be in Jackson Hole, though. There are all kinds of different people we can talk to, including people who sit perfectly at this intersection of all the things that we're talking about. That's exactly what I was going to say. So the guest for today, truly the perfect guest, someone who's able to sort of synthesize the macro and what's going on in the bond market, as well as some of the operations of the actual treasury market. So truly the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Daryl Duffy. He is, of course, professor of finance over at Stanford University. So, Daryl, thank you so much for coming back on All Thoughts. Tracy, Joe, great to be back. Thank you. Is there a connection between higher bond yields and the payment system? Basically, why are you here? Well, there can be. In March of 2020, when the markets became dysfunctional, the Fed had to step in and dig out the balance sheets of the largest dealers to keep the bond market moving. And bond yields jumped and were very volatile. The last time we talked was also at Jackson Hole. And we talked about this relationship between just the sheer volume of public debt that's traded these days. [5:00] and the sort of like scarce dealer balance sheet. And this is like, you know, often when people talk about the size of the debt, they talk about maybe like debt to GDP or something like that or whatever. This is like what you focus on then and some of your work takes it from a different angle. Yes. Talk about the volume, but just sort of the pipes that we have to run it through. That's right. And, you know, after that event in 2020, I said it would happen again. Dealer balance sheets would get clogged again. But even with massive amounts of trading we're seeing today, the dealers have more space yet. Could be capital regulations are not as strong. Could be the dealers have recapitalized. But they're definitely in force. I definitely want to talk more about that. But just on a basic level, when you look at yields on something like the 30 or above 5%, I know they've come in slightly today following the chairman's speech. But when you see a yield at that level, what do you think? What is it telling you? Well, if I'm the Secretary of the Treasury, it's telling me that the United States is spending a heck of a lot on interest expense and I need to do what I can to get those yields down. The question is what can the Treasury Secretary do As an economist I run the following thought experiment Suppose Tracy I were to convince you there no inflation risk Inflation as indicated in today markets is pretty stable going forward The sovereign is not going to default. You are, let's say, a hedge fund, a macro hedge fund. you have 20 billion of the 10 years. I wish, but go on. And I'm calling from the Treasury Department, and I'm suggesting that you could take another 10. There's space on your own balance sheet to do that. Now, given the conditions that I described for the safe bonds, why wouldn't you? The reason is you already have what you chose to have at 5.3%, and in order to get you to buy 10 billion more, You need a higher yield to compensate you. The foreign central banks, they have had what they need for a long time now. They're not buying more. Foreign investors generally are not keeping up with the size of the bond market. So it's the discretionary investors, the mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, that are yield sensitive and are being asked to take more of a pretty safe asset But they not going to do it unless they get more yield compensation It an interesting way to think about it So in Tracy proverbial hedge fund she has the $20 billion allocation to treasuries, but no one's paying Tracy just to hold treasuries, right? So she presumably has a lot of other assets, risky assets. Maybe she's been in NVIDIA. I've got the best assets, Joe, the best. Maybe she's been in Korean chip stocks or all the other things. When we think about the pricing, though, to what extent does it make sense to think about a treasury bond being as in competition for other theoretically investable assets? And when all those are flying to the moon or many of them like we've seen, does that have a sort of a reverberation onto the risk-free asset? Sure, it does. And it's other bonds included in that. The hyperscalers have famously been demanding a lot of investment by bond investors, and it's all piling on. But the biggest culprit is our governments generally, not just the U.S., but especially the U.S. And government deficits and debt to GDP are spectacularly high and there's no end in sight. So this piling on effect, you know, I think it's mainly in the bond market. Debt to GDP ratios no end in sight et cetera Certainly that seems right People could have said that five or six years ago Well they could have said that 2018 2019 And they said every years about Japan and just rates kept going there Now they're going higher. But they said they kept going lower. What is it? What changed? Like you could have told this story 10 years ago and you could have laid out the demographics and you could have talked about the lack of political appetite to cut spending, et cetera. What changed fundamentally such that we got this reversal? Okay, so let's go back even further to when the IMF said 60% debt to GDP is the red line. You should not want to go beyond that, and if you do, it's at your own risk. That number just kept getting higher and higher for all major governments. France now is also at 100% debt to GDP. So what's changed is the sheer volume of government debt relative to GDP. It marches on and on. Ten years ago, it wasn't anywhere near 100%. The Treasury market was, let's see, if I recall, about 18 trillion. Now it's 31 trillion. So it's just volume. It's not, I mean, as Ken Rogoff remarked at lunch, there's a lot of regression to the mean in terms of long-term yields. [10:00] And things come and go. But what's been coming is more and more bond debt. Yeah. Can you say more about this idea of competition with hyperscalers? Because I see some people seem to take it as a given, like the hyperscalers are issuing so much debt into the market, particularly longer term debt that like it obviously has this crowding out effect. But then I see some other people and they'll be like, oh, no, the buyers of U.S. treasuries are different to the buyers of investment grade bonds. And there's no way they're in competition with each other. But to me, it feels like the overall theme of the bond market right now is this additional duration that investors have to absorb. No, that's absolutely right. And I wouldn't describe it as the hyperscalers crowding out the Treasury Department, but rather the other way around. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I mean, $32 trillion and rising at $2 trillion a year. There's nothing, I mean, it is true, hyperscalers are perhaps going to hit a trillion of debt in the next couple of years. That's small compared to the Treasury Department. So, you know, I really think it's the Treasury and not just the U.S. Treasury, finance ministries and legislatures around the world that are stuffing a lot of bonds into the hands of the same investors Yeah pension funds insurance companies they buy all of this and they make trade And we see what happening to yields I just thought of a great idea for a sci-fi story in which essentially the giant government debt loads collapse governments and these AI building companies become the new sovereign. That's what I've been saying. So that's in Margaret Atwood, one of Margaret Atwood's books. It's the companies basically replace the governments and you live in a corporate compound and everything is provided to you by the tech company. And the Claude yield and the Gemini yield. And those will be our new risk free. But I want to get back to one more thing. So I get all this, what you're saying. One word that hasn't come up, though, is inflation. And so when I think like a big difference between seven or eight years ago and now is that there is continued to be high inflation years above target. and it turned out it was even a very aggressive rate hiking cycle didn't get it back to target. Why couldn't it simply be that the reason for higher rates is the series of higher short-term rates as expected because there are a lot of inflationary impulses One among them may be spending In the long run inflation and bond prices go together Fiscal theory of the price level Meet John Cochran book or maybe you have We've never heard John on the podcast. We really should do that. He would be perfect on this question. But today, if you look at forward implied inflation numbers coming from real and nominal bonds, they're not showing alarm bells at all. It's true that we've had a significantly more inflation than the Fed would like to see for the last five years. And as Kevin Warsh remarked this morning and others have spoken, the last part is a lot of work remaining to be done by the Fed. So yeah, inflation is a concern, but I don't, my view, I don't think that's what bond investors that are thinking about the 10s, 20s and 30 years, what's foremost on their mind. I think they're looking at the supply relative to the demand. And again, foreign central banks have had all that they need and they're not buying more. And it's mostly domestic discretionary investors that are being asked to take this additional supply and they just need more compensation. Did you ever notice how you spend hours shopping online only to pause right before you hit buy now? That tiny hesitation, the one where you wonder if it is trustworthy, can make or break the sale. Now, with AI changing the way consumers discover and compare things, that split-second trust question matters more than ever. That's where PayPal comes in. 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Head to business.optum.com to see how. This is kind of a cliched question but that deluge of debt issuance I guess what does that actually mean for central bankers Because when you come to a conference like this it feels like that the obvious thing in the mix And you hear little whispers of words like fiscal dominance, but no one actually talks about it in any direct way. Yeah, I think the Fed is studiously avoiding fiscal dominance. It would not entertain a discussion with the Treasury regarding yield curve control. The last time that happened, it was a very acrimonious end in the 1950s with the Fed Treasury Accord. People think the word accord means they had a good agreement. It actually means they had a really, really rough argument. And the Fed supplied some support to the bond market, kicking and screaming for a short period of time, and then got out of the business of yield curve control, and it won't want to revisit that. The FOMC will do everything possible not to get into fiscal dominance. So I think that's my reaction. So one of the reasons we wanted to speak to you is because you done work on the impact of Treasury buyback programs in particular And of course I guess was it a week or two ago I lost all sense of time But recently we had Scott Besson announcing that he was increasing the size of the Treasury buyback program He cited liquidity concerns. But as far as I can tell, things look pretty normal in the Treasury market at that moment in time. What do you think his thinking was? Well, from his remarks, he seemed to think that yields were too high, irrespective of liquidity concerns, and that in his view, market participants should have understood that a lower yield for the U.S. Treasury securities would be appropriate. And he said that he was signaling, he used the word signal, signaling to the market his belief that Treasury yields were too high. Now, I think we subsequently can see that while the market reacted quickly to that news, it reversed itself pretty quickly afterwards. Part of that related to the firepower of the Treasury Department relative to the bond market. I'm sure you remember James Carville's famous comments about the power of the bond market. Anyone who has ever written about the bond market has used this quote as the lead for a column at some point myself included yeah did you what Trump said the other day Oh yeah about military intervention in the bond market So I don know maybe James Carville wasn thinking fully that the bond vigilante had not James Carville had not considered that the bond vigilantes could be bombed into submission, potentially. I don't know if he thought about that one. Well, even the mighty U.S. Treasury Department is not as powerful as bond markets when it comes to setting yields. We also saw in the yen intervention some signals that perhaps, first, we have a more activist Treasury Department than we've had in the past in terms of willingness to engage in financial market trades. And secondly, that there might be some concern that if things don't go well in Japan and the Japanese central bank needs to unload treasuries, that that would add on to this piling on that we just discussed and cause problems for U.S. treasury markets and the interest expense of the U.S. government. So my impression, maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, is that Secretary Besant wanted to market to understand that the Treasury Department wasn't just going to sit there idly and take that. They wanted to be involved. [20:00] They seem to work better when they are not volume bound by but by level bound. And when it seems often the case when they're level bound, you don't even have to spend anything. So you say, OK, five percent is our line in the sand. And in theory, doesn't the Treasury have it could just issue two year bills and just take out the 30s. Would that I mean, if Besset very strongly feels that it's like these prices just do not on some fundamental level do not make sense. Could he just say, you know what, we're going to issue only two years or five years or whatever. We're going to buy 30 years any time they get to 4.99 percent. And if you're a bond vigilante and you're thinking it's going to go, you're shorting debt, you're going to get badly burned. Well, that would be a formula for increasing the interest rate expense volatility for the U.S. government, because your debt maturity is going to be shorter and shorter. and you're going to be rolling over that debt in auctions that will reflect current market conditions. And a larger and larger fraction of your interest expense is going to be realized on a day-to-day basis. So the U.S. is still in pretty good shape. It has an average debt maturity of about six years I also have the view that governments are just not powerful enough to control these trends with their own resources. Let's go back to the attack on the British pound in which Scott Besson had a role in 1992 when he was working with the Soros hedge fund. And the British government was simply unable to defend the pound, and it should never have tried. It used up a lot of its firepower that way. And so even, as I said, the U.S. Treasury Department, if markets decide that yields are going to be at 6%, the U.S. Treasury Department is not going to be able to have a strong say in that, not without taking a lot of risk. What does your research actually say about, I guess, the impact and duration of Treasury buybacks? Because this isn't the first time the Treasury is doing this. There's plenty of empirical instances that you can base your research on. What have you found previously? Well, I'm working right now with two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Michael Fleming and Orr Shachar, and with my PhD student at Stanford Sam Witcherly and we are using the buyback data as well as turnover data on dealer balance sheets to understand the benefit of the original purpose of the buyback program which is to go out and clean up the leftover bits and pieces of old treasury notes and bonds Odd lots. Odd lots, yeah. But this was stuff that actually wasn't really trading anymore, right? Yeah, it was clogging up dealer balance sheets and trading at lower prices than would be suggested by a smooth yield curve. And so the idea was, as explained by then Assistant Treasury Secretary Josh Frost, let's be regular and predictable and clean up these bits and pieces, make the Treasury market more liquid by replacing those with new liquid Treasuries and implicitly make some money for the U.S. taxpayer by buy low, sell high. And that's a good program. Our research shows, well, it's in progress. You'll see the paper eventually. It shows that you and your PhD student can come back on for that. It shows that that's effective. And by the way, I think it's totally legitimate that a treasury secretary or a treasury department would step into the market and use the buyback program for unanticipated needs So for example going back to March 2020 it totally legitimate that a finance ministry or a treasury department would say it our bond market it dysfunctional it benefits us to step into that market and not leave it entirely to the central bank. You may remember the Liz Truss budget. At that time, the Bank of England faced this dilemma. it was tightening its monetary policy, and at the same time it had to buy gilts. And so it made a very clear distinction and soon afterwards sold those gilts. It's easier if the Treasury Department is involved. In the case of the U.K., it indemnified the Bank of England for the losses that it might have incurred. And in the case of the United States, the Treasury Department could use its own buyback program to add firepower. and that could be done on the scale of hundreds of billions, not the mere four to eight billion that the Treasury Department has been speaking about over the last couple of weeks. But from your perspective, in the last few weeks, there's nothing in the sort of classical measures of liquidity that were out of whack? No, nothing. Dealer balance sheets seem to be in good shape. Bit offer spreads, market depth are in normal range. [25:00] So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions. Not noise. 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I mean, one way to think about it is it's not that different from QE or Operation Twist as some of these things that the central bank did in the 2010s to sort of change the shape or the slope of the yield curve. But that was in a time of below target inflation and central bank trying to cause things to reaccelerate. But on some level does this look like efforts that classically would you might expect to see in an environment where the central bank is trying to goose inflation When you say this meaning what action The sort of the expanded buybacks, the attempt to depress the long end that sort of looks Operation Twisty. But that was in an environment where we were sub 2% to the frustration of the central bank. Yeah. So, well, first of all, I don't think this is stepping on the toes of the Fed. Okay. And I do think that it feels like a twisty type of operation, but a micro twist. It's the firepower that, you know, a few billion dollars, other than the signaling, a few billion dollars is just not going to move the needle. Micro twist sounds like one of those terrible Alco pops of like the early 2000s, right? I was thinking maybe it sounds like a dance. I would try a micro twist. Okay. Well, okay, but if the Treasury is issuing more short-term debt, which it is, does that solve the long-end yield problem, or does that just end up shifting the issue into money markets? Well, it does shift issuance into bills, and that's how buybacks are working with these particular operations. And yeah so it means as I mentioned there shorter and shorter debt maturity but no alarm bells yet The US is not out of historical norms It actually a bit longer maturity average maturity than normal And, you know, I'm not that worried yet. I mean, if they were to continue, and really the real action is in new issuance, not in buybacks. If they were to continue to keep the issuance of long-term securities at current levels, as they have been, and have forecasted that they will, if they were to keep doing that for years, then the piling up of short-term debt would eventually be notable, and it would cause concern. All right. So, you know, I talked in the beginning of all these different things that are happening at the moment, but one of them is the new Fed chair and the task forces that he's created, including one that's looking at the Fed balance sheet. Can you maybe put your Kevin Warsh hat on for a second? And when he says he wants to shrink the size of the Fed's balance sheet, why is that desirable? Well, first, I'm not Kevin Warsh, so I'm not going to get inside his head. But judging from his speech around the G30 meeting last year, in which he was most clear on his views here, I think he worries me. [30:00] is that the Fed looks like it's too active in financial markets, that its footprint is too big, and that it has the image of possibly getting into fiscal policy. And so he wants to stay completely, my interpretation, he wants to stay clear of having created that impression, and a smaller balance sheet would signal that. And I think the more interesting question is how could you do it? Yeah. Because it's easy enough to sell bonds on the asset side, but it's not easy to extinguish the liabilities on the other side of the balance sheet. That's right. When we think about the Fed balance sheet, everyone always thinks about assets because we've gone through years and years and years of QE and no one ever thinks about liabilities. But how do you – those two things have to be in balance. You can't shrink the asset side without shrinking the liability side. You reached that conclusion, Tracy, faster than almost anyone that I talked to. Oh dear, okay. So if you just do adding up, if you want to reduce the assets, you have to reduce the liabilities one for one. Let's take them in turn. You've got the Treasury General account. I don't think the Fed's going to call the Treasury and say, would you take some money out of your account at the Fed Then you got paper money I don think the Fed is going to put out advertisements saying please Americans and everybody else out there in the world that has paper money, would you mind turning it in so that we can reduce that liability? So the only significant possible reduction is in reserves, meaning the deposits that commercial banks have at the Fed. And there is scope for doing that, but not with the current tools that the Fed has. Would there be a regulatory change that would be necessary? Because we went years and years, right, with basically no balance sheet. And then, you know, then 2008 hit and suddenly there's all these reserves. Why can't we go back to – what would be the challenge of going back to 2000? Before Lehman, we didn't have that many reserves. Yeah, right, right. So what would it take if for some reason we thought this is very important, we want to get back to the real good old days of Fed balance sheet side, What would it actually take from a regulation perspective to get to just a 2005-looking banking system? It's not going to happen, Joe, because back in 2005, liquidity regulations were much different, and the Fed didn't pay interest on reserves, so the banks were not in the least interest in holding reserves because why would you hold reserves getting zero interest when you could invest the money in money markets and under a full market rate Today in order to control inflation the Fed is forced to pay an interest rate to banks that roughly the market rate And so, you know, if you ask a bank, well, why don't you give up some of those reserves? They might say, well, why? They're so useful for meeting liquidity regulations. They pay a full market interest rate. They're perfect for payment services. what's not to like? It's the Swiss army knife of finance. We're not going to give those up easily. And right here in checks and hole in 2017, Veral Acharya and Raghurajan presented a paper describing a ratchet effect by which every time the Fed increases its balance sheet and adds reserves, the banks get addicted to having more of that extremely useful asset reserves, and they're reluctant to give it up. And if you try to make them, markets get volatile and the Fed has to back off. So a lot has changed. What would be your recommendation if you were on this task force? I think it's Stein who's heading it. But, you know, if war says, I want to shrink the size of the balance sheet and we have this reserves problem, what would you do? It Jeremy Stein Raghurajan the same economist that spoke here about the ratchet effect and Karen Dynan all very noted very credible extremely wise and articulate economists What they're going to do, what they're going to recommend, I don't know. But I think that they're going to take a very wide lens look at this. They're not going to look only at size. They're going to look at the composition of the assets. I predict that they will, and this is with no information from them, I predict that they will recommend reducing the quantity of long-term treasury securities that the Fed holds and replacing those with treasury bills in order to reduce the volatility of the Fed's interest expense. So, for example, if you back the reserves one-to-one with treasury bills, then every time the Fed has to pay more interest to the banks to control inflation, It's getting more interest on their treasury bills one for one. Paper money, they could continue to hold long-term securities. And I don't think the Fed feels good about having mortgage-backed securities. I think they're just going to let those roll off. So I think that could be in one area that they will get into, is the composition of the assets. And on the liability side, it's hard to predict. In my own view, the Fed doesn't need to reduce the size of its balance sheet, but it's [35:00] have the tools that would allow it to do that. Because if my hunch that this has politics around it is correct, the Fed never wants to be put into a corner by Congress over the size of its balance sheet without the tools that would allow the Fed to say, no, we're not going to increase our balance sheet as you would like us to do and buy the assets that you would like us to buy, but rather we can control our own balance sheet by reducing it if we need to. And those tools exist in theory, but they haven't been developed in practice by the Fed yet. They have been for other central banks. I have one more question, and it's not really a question. It's more of a favor, really. But can you convince Joe that the term premium is a useful concept. He doesn't believe in it. I think you believe it exists, but you don't believe that it's useful in any way. You're not going to defend yourself, Joe? I'm a simple man. I look at a 30-year yield, I think it looks like a 30 years worth of overnight rates You just add them up and I just you know that how that what I assume And then everyone like no but the term premium And then they say and then I say okay but what is it They like well we can really measure it And then all the models that we have to measure don work but trust us This is why it's useful. And then they say, and then they say, oh, well, they need, treasury investors need compensation for risk. To which I say, just treasury investors as if there's something special about it. Like, I really, I really struggle with it. So this is why we need a Stanford economist to straighten me out. It's an easily measured concept. So it tells everyone the value of short-term versus long-term money and interest rates. But then decomposing it is the hard part. So you mentioned there's the path of expected short-term interest rates that's built in. That in itself reflects inflation. And then on top of that, there's a risk premium. And how to decompose that, economists like John Cochran, whom we mentioned earlier, with Monica Piazzese, have done some of the best work on that decomposition, and it changes over time depending on one of the things that we just discussed earlier, which is the volume of Treasury issuance. That elevates the entire curve, and it elevates it more in the future if you don think that the fiscal deficits are going to go down All right Joe going home from this podcast with homework I going to do some reading yeah Assigned reading All right Daryl Duffy from Stanford thank you so much for coming back on All Thoughts. Really appreciate it. Tracy, Joe, it's always a pleasure. Ask me back. We'll definitely do it again. Thank you so much. So, Joe, that was great. I know we've been meaning to talk about the Treasury buyback, so I'm glad we could get into that. I was thinking, you know, he mentioned the Treasury general account at the Fed, which is like the Treasury's checking account. And you always hear this stat that it covers five days of government expenses or something like that. And I always think about the headlines saying ordinary Americans, you know, half of ordinary Americans only have enough money to cover three months expenses. And then I'm like, what about the Fed? What about the Treasury? I'm being somewhat facetious. Sorry, what about the Treasury? But like, it is kind of crazy. Five days. Yeah, I guess it is kind of crazy. But you know, just thinking, oh, I just issue more debt. What if Trump actually bombs the bond market? What happens to the Treasury account? It is weird that we actually haven talked about that quote very much But such as life We find the perfect guest to talk about it Such as life in 2026 I thought that was really good I actually did not fully understand previously why buybacks exist in the normal term Okay, setting aside why there's the deviation from the typical schedule, why they exist in the first place, and this idea that what is the point of having these sort of off the run, And we're, you know, is that some 27 year bond that's sitting out there that no one wants, whatever, that it just sort of makes sense to have a regular a regular sweep of that. You know what they call it in crypto world? What? It's dust. So, for example, like. Like abandoned assets, kind of. It's kind of like if there'll be little flex of like point zero zero zero two Bitcoin on like some wallet or something. But because I remember because there's a transaction fee with all of them, you can accumulate this dust and it's not economical to move it off of them that creates all kinds of issues and stuff. It's sort of similar. I remember weren't there some startups at one point who are trying to, like, collect all the dust, roll it up into something substantial. Yeah. The other thing I was thinking just about the buyback program now is, I mean, you almost have an issue with the reaction function of the Treasury now. [40:00] citing market liquidity in order to increase the size of the buybacks. But the Treasury market seems to be operating pretty normally. And then everyone starts focusing on the yield, as Daryl was saying, it seems like Besson just doesn't think the yield is at the right level. Well, then suddenly you have this target that investors are maybe going to be watching for signs that the Treasury is going to come back in. I think Besson really just misses being a hedge funder. He's like, no, this is like, the yield is too high. It's like an opportunity to buy, right? And you're like intervening in the yen and stuff. I think this is like, he's in his comfort ground when he's making moves like this. Well, I will say, as of the moment we're recording, he's probably above water on his treasury purchases, right? So I thought so, too. Yeah. Except, so this is what I thought. I was like, oh, this is a good trade. Evidently, the purchase, this is what two people on Twitter told me this, because I thought that, too. That must be true, Joe. The purchases start September 9th. So there was the announcement that came. I see. So had he, anyway. But I had that same thought. Oh, it's looking like a pretty good trade now. All right. Stay tuned for the Odd Lots episode tracking Besson's trade. But shall we leave it there for now? Let's leave it there. Okay. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArmand, Dashel Bennett at Dashbot, Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks, and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more Odd Lots content, you should check out our daily newsletter. You can find that at Bloomberg.com forward slash Odd Lots. And you can chat about all of these things 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash Odd Lots. And if you enjoyed this conversation, then please leave a comment or like the video or better yet, subscribe. Thanks for watching and listening. Thank you Music Music Thank you. What's that look like? Cheaper prescriptions that are easier to get and care that looks at the whole person how you need it. 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