Free Republic

There's reason to be concerned about bond vigilantes, who are no longer under "lock and key" and are free to push yields higher, Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni told CNBC on Friday. Yardeni, a market historian, coined the term bond vigilantes in the 1980s to refer to investors who sell their holdings in an effort to enforce fiscal discipline. Having fewer buyers drives prices down — and drives yields up — in the fixed-income market. That, in turn, makes it more expensive for the government to borrow and spend. "They had been sort of put under lock and key by...

The bond vigilantes are finally flexing their muscles. A long period of stability for the US government bond market showed signs of cracking this week as a lack of investor appetite for new debt sent the benchmark 10-year yield to its highest level since last June. For more than a year, analysts have been warning that record sized debt sales by the US Treasury were at odds with a 10-year yield sitting comfortably below 4 per cent. This week, the yield on 10-year notes jumped from 3.65 per cent to a peak of 3.92 per cent on Thursday. On Friday...

The bond vigilantes are finally flexing their muscles. A long period of stability for the US government bond market showed signs of cracking this week as a lack of investor appetite for new debt sent the benchmark 10-year yield to its highest level since last June. For more than a year, analysts have been warning that record sized debt sales by the US Treasury were at odds with a 10-year yield sitting comfortably below 4 per cent. This week, the yield on 10-year notes jumped from 3.65 per cent to a peak of 3.92 per cent on Thursday. On Friday...

The collapse of Lehman Brothers ...triggered one of the biggest corporate debt defaults in history, and also ignited the biggest stock market meltdown in decades. When the smoke had finally cleared, LehmanÂ’s bonds attracted bids of 8 cents on the dollar, resulting in staggering losses of $365 billion. Worse yet, about 350 banks and investors were thought to have insured $400 billion of LehmanÂ’s bonds through complex derivatives, known as credit default swaps (CDSs), causing even deeper losses and mayhem in the markets. A fifth was wiped off London Footsie shares. In Tokyo the Nikkei-225 index lost 10% of its...

Bond vigilantes—investors who, in protest to the government's monetary or fiscal policies policy, sell bonds to purposely drive up yield on U.S. debt—are back after 15 years of remaining on the low-down, according to Bloomberg. Higher yields mean higher interest costs for the government, making the cost of borrowing more expensive and throwing the proverbial wrench in Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's efforts to keep borrowing costs low for consumers and businesses while also trying to jolt the economy. The 10-year Treasury yield has risen 1.4 percent this year, pushing interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages to more than 5 percent....