From https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/peter-schiff-u-borrowing-costs-131050552.html
Title : Peter Schiff: U.S. Borrowing Costs Now Top Germany and Japan, and It’s Not About the War
By Omor Ibne Ehsan , 29 May 2026
Poster's Note: Peter David Schiff is an American stockbroker, financial commentator, and radio personality. He is recognized for his knowledge of the foreign securities markets as well as the currency and gold markets but garnered international attention for accurately predicting the collapse of the housing and credit markets, the subprime crisis, and the increasing price of precious metals relative to the US dollar.
Peter Schiff has spent his career predicting bond market trouble. On the latest episode of his podcast he thinks the trouble finally has nowhere left to hide. Oil prices have softened, war headlines have improved, and yet the long end of the Treasury curve refuses to behave. The 30-year yield sits at 5%, the 10-year is at 4.45% ..
"It's the debt," he said .. a sovereign borrower asking creditors to fund an ever-larger pile at a price those creditors increasingly reject ...
The United States now pays more to borrow for 30 years than Germany, Japan, and most of Europe. Only the UK is higher, and he expects American yields to overtake British gilts soon enough. For a reserve-currency issuer, that is an awkward position. A country whose bonds are the global risk-free benchmark is now being priced as a worse credit than economies with slower growth, older populations, and fewer structural advantages Washington usually invokes..
Then there is the supply problem. Schiff notes that roughly one-third of the $39.3 trillion national debt matures within the next year, meaning $12 trillion to $13 trillion has to be rolled, on top of roughly $3 trillion in new borrowing to cover the deficit. That is a staggering amount of paper to place into a market where foreign demand is shrinking.
"Foreigners don't want to lend us money anymore, and they know that we're going to print money," Schiff said. His read on the Treasury's recent bond buyback program is that it is exactly that. Treasury buys back long-dated bonds nobody wants, issues short-term bills to fund it, and the Fed buys the short-term bills, which he calls "a QE program that's going on, surreptitiously through the Treasury and the buybacks."
The mechanical effect is more short-duration issuance, more central bank balance sheet absorption, and a long end left to find its own clearing price...
The instrument most directly in the crosshairs is the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ:TLT), which holds long-dated paper at a 15 basis point expense ratio. Longer-term Treasuries lose value if bond yields rise .. Thus, the fund is down 27.4% over 5 years and down 13.3% over 10 ...
Title : Peter Schiff: U.S. Borrowing Costs Now Top Germany and Japan, and It’s Not About the War
By Omor Ibne Ehsan , 29 May 2026
Poster's Note: Peter David Schiff is an American stockbroker, financial commentator, and radio personality. He is recognized for his knowledge of the foreign securities markets as well as the currency and gold markets but garnered international attention for accurately predicting the collapse of the housing and credit markets, the subprime crisis, and the increasing price of precious metals relative to the US dollar.
Peter Schiff has spent his career predicting bond market trouble. On the latest episode of his podcast he thinks the trouble finally has nowhere left to hide. Oil prices have softened, war headlines have improved, and yet the long end of the Treasury curve refuses to behave. The 30-year yield sits at 5%, the 10-year is at 4.45% ..
"It's the debt," he said .. a sovereign borrower asking creditors to fund an ever-larger pile at a price those creditors increasingly reject ...
The United States now pays more to borrow for 30 years than Germany, Japan, and most of Europe. Only the UK is higher, and he expects American yields to overtake British gilts soon enough. For a reserve-currency issuer, that is an awkward position. A country whose bonds are the global risk-free benchmark is now being priced as a worse credit than economies with slower growth, older populations, and fewer structural advantages Washington usually invokes..
Then there is the supply problem. Schiff notes that roughly one-third of the $39.3 trillion national debt matures within the next year, meaning $12 trillion to $13 trillion has to be rolled, on top of roughly $3 trillion in new borrowing to cover the deficit. That is a staggering amount of paper to place into a market where foreign demand is shrinking.
"Foreigners don't want to lend us money anymore, and they know that we're going to print money," Schiff said. His read on the Treasury's recent bond buyback program is that it is exactly that. Treasury buys back long-dated bonds nobody wants, issues short-term bills to fund it, and the Fed buys the short-term bills, which he calls "a QE program that's going on, surreptitiously through the Treasury and the buybacks."
The mechanical effect is more short-duration issuance, more central bank balance sheet absorption, and a long end left to find its own clearing price...
The instrument most directly in the crosshairs is the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ:TLT), which holds long-dated paper at a 15 basis point expense ratio. Longer-term Treasuries lose value if bond yields rise .. Thus, the fund is down 27.4% over 5 years and down 13.3% over 10 ...
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