Bond yields tend to oscillate around a long-term average. Allison Schrager

 

Yields on 30-year US bonds broke 5% last week, a level not seen since before the Great Financial Crisis. 

The Treasury Department bought bonds in an attempt to lower yields. It worked — for a day, then bond yields went back up. 

Meanwhile, in a not-exactly-unrelated development, the US national debt just passed $40 trillion.

Bond doomers (I am one) have been waiting for this moment for about 15 years. But we are not yet vindicated. Yields may fall again.

This is not a new normal — it is just normal, period. On of the first things I learned about long-term bonds is that, unlike stocks, they revert to the mean. 

Bond prices can’t keep going up forever, because that would involve negative yields. Bond yields tend to oscillate around a long-term average. 

That average may change over time, and it has fallen since the Middle Ages as the world became a less risky place.

Allison Schrager Bloomberg August 24, 2026  

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-08-24/us-bond-market-is-returning-to-the-old-normal