29 OCTOBER 2026
Remarkably, it took the US government more than 200 years to accumulate its first U$10 trillion of debt.
Since then, it has added almost U$30 trillion in little more than two decades.
The total debt stock has risen by over U$3 trillion in the past year alone, taking outstanding Treasury securities to almost U$40 trillion.
That helps explain why the recent rise in bond yields is about more than inflation and growth. Increasingly, it reflects the sheer volume of debt that financial markets are being asked to absorb.
Nor is this just a sovereign story. The same dynamic is emerging in parts of the private sector, with the technology hyper-scalers increasingly tapping debt markets to fund their AI ambitions.
Few policymakers appear willing to bring this borrowing boom to an end, suggesting structural pressure on bond markets is likely to persist.
The question is not whether economies can tolerate materially higher borrowing costs.
It is how long before policymakers prove, once again, that they cannot.
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