Bond yields jump, erasing impact of Treasury Department’s intervention

Normally quiet, the bond market can occasionally send warning signals loud enough to hit stock markets worldwide and even grab the attention of U.S. presidents and other world leaders

With elevated US Treasury yields fuelling concerns about Washington’s fiscal sustainability, the country’s Treasury Department stepped in on Wednesday, announcing plans to at least double the size of some long-end bond buy-backs.

This technical measure is modest in scale – $4 billion a week while the net public debt stands at $32 trillion.

The yield on 30-year Treasury bonds was up as much as 0.07 percentage points at 5.27 per cent in New York morning trading on Thursday, reversing most of the 0.09 percentage point fall that followed the Treasury announcement on Wednesday, before dipping to 5.25 per cent.