Bond markets love the 1994 precedent. But back then, the Berlin Wall, a China nobody feared and a shrinking Pentagon did much of the Fed's work. Who does it in 2026?
A 19-year high in the US ten-year yield looks like the entry point bond investors have waited for since 2008. History agrees. The inflation-linked market does not. Someone in the US economy is now willing to pay more for capital than almost anyone else.
Germany's ifo index beat every forecast in September. Look inside the order book, however, and a different question emerges: is Germany recovering, or is the state simply placing the orders? Across the Rhine, France is testing how long bond markets will wait for a budget a divided parliament may never pass.
Britain just borrowed more than forecast, five weeks before a Budget its Chancellor can barely afford to deliver. Gilt yields haven't been this high since 1998, AI capex is still mostly promises, and Reform's war chest just tripled. Something has to give — the question is what, and who pays for finding out.
Germany's chancellor has lost the argument in public twice in a fortnight. But the harder question is not who takes his job. It is who can take it, keep a majority and still do what the economy needs. And why is the market that just pushed US yields past 5% already looking at Frankfurt?
Scott Bessent says he's 'the house' in the yen market and tripled the Treasury's bond buyback to calm yields. The market didn't blink — yields hit a three-year high anyway. Is this just noise, or is something structural quietly repricing who wants to hold US debt at all?
The yen just jumped to a six-month high, and it is barely about the yen at all. Something in Japan's bond-market plumbing has quietly changed — and it may explain why Japanese money is about to stop funding everyone else's deficits, starting with America's
China's trade numbers look like a triumph — exports up 25%, a record surplus. So why did Beijing rush a $54bn rescue into its banks and insurers the very same week, and why did their shares fall anyway? The answer says less about China than about what comes next for Western interest rates.
Saxony-Anhalt turned out in record numbers — but not to stop the AfD. What does an earthquake result in one German state mean for Merz, for the firewall, and for how Europe chooses to defend, supply and finance itself?
AI capex now commands the biggest slice of available capital and the highest perceived return — a combination that doesn't just win financing, it resets the price of it for everyone else. The US has already felt the squeeze. Is Europe about to find out what that really costs?
Eurozone inflation just hit 3.3%, its fastest pace since 2023. But the scatter plots don't show a wage-price spiral — they show something else entirely. While markets fixate on this month's HICP print, a much bigger fight over Europe's savings is already reshaping bond yields. Here's what the headline number is actually hiding.
Three German state elections in a fortnight. An AfD polling at 40% whose own supporters trust it less than they trust Merz. A CDU firewall that holds against the AfD but is cracking against Die Linke. And a French hard-left proposal about to make Berlin's fiscal argument look almost reasonable by comparison.
