“US borrowing costs hit 24-year high as global bond sell-off intensifies”, 1 October 2026 (Photo via The Guardian — the original report)
As it ran on the front
Today we are making American borrowing costs, a dish your own kitchen already knows how to cook, so you will recognise the method even if you do not care for the result. You will need a federal deficit nobody in Washington has agreed to shrink, a great many government bonds for sale, and a buyer on the other side of each one asking for more before taking it.
The Punk Buyer. Send him round, we've a boiler wants taking out the back anyway, and nobody here has asked for more off it in months.
…(cont) On the first of September the ten-year note crossed 4.7 per cent, its highest point since October 2023, and the thirty-year was already trading above 5.2. Nothing stopped there; a note, once it starts asking for more, does not generally settle for the first offer.
The Poet Crossed. Crossed like a picket line, and I shall be writing to it directly. It will not enjoy the reply.
Three days later an American paper put it in plainer language than we use at home: the bond market, it said, was revolting, and the first casualty was the ordinary home buyer, whose mortgage goes up with everything else on the shelf.
The Fixer Casualty. There's always a market in casualty. I'll have it off the rota by Friday, same as the kitty.
Take the note by both ends and turn it over: on the fifteenth of September it peaked, intraday, at 5.041 per cent, its highest mark since July 2007, closing the day above five. Underneath, the deficit investors call unsustainable has not moved.
The Hippie Closed. Everything closes eventually, the sun, the shops, us. The lentils have been on since lunchtime and it was always going to end like this.
By Thursday the sell-off had not finished, and the high cost of oil was already feeding fears of fresh inflation. The ten-year reached its highest level in twenty-four years, and your own thirty-year gilt went, briefly, above six per cent, not touched since 1998. You will be looking for the moment this stops being American. There is no such moment; that is the six per cent.
The Guardian, which is what arrives on this table, has it as "US borrowing costs hit 24-year high as global bond sell-off intensifies," and underneath, in smaller print, "Fears that US deficit is unsustainable." At home, on the fourth of September, an American paper had it as "The bond market is revolting," and called your mortgage its first casualty.
Serves the lender, who gets a better rate for the risk carried. The bill goes to whoever borrows next, on either side of the ocean.
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“They sell this as a "bond market," which is just a polite word for people betting on whether Washington ever pays its tab, and now the bet's gone bad enough it's dragging up what folks in Britain pay on their own mortgages too. Nobody voted for a twenty-four year high. The guys who wouldn't touch a nickel of the deficit are about to get bailed out by everybody's rent and car payment, here and over there.”
“Look, yields are up everywhere, that's a global story, don't let anybody tell you this is a Washington problem — did I say Washington? I meant, this is clearly an oil story, a global oil story, nothing to do with the deficit at all, which, by the way, we are absolutely going to address, soon.”
Fears that US deficit is unsustainable also drive UK 30-year bond yields briefly above 6% for first time since 1998 Business live – latest updates The global bond sell-off intensified on Thursday, driving 10-year US government borrowing costs to their highest level in 24 years in a frantic day’s trading. The threat of a renewed round of…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
