Wolf Street

The hocus-pocus show falls flat. Well, OK, then. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The Treasury Department announced this morning that it would buy back a “maximum par amount” (face value) of $6 billion in Treasury bonds at the buyback auction tomorrow, tripling the amount of the bond buyback auctions that Yellen had started in April 2024.

Americans hate, hate, hate high gas prices, but they’re less sensitive to them than auto dealers ironically expected. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The spike in gasoline prices from February through mid-May did a job on auto dealers, and they piled into wholesale auctions and bid up prices of used EVs, expecting huge retail demand from consumers trying to dodge those high gas prices that were apparently ruining their lives.

The government is already busy fighting over what to do with the $31 billion in profits on its foreign exchange interventions last fiscal year. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The economy did fine with a 10-year yield of 5-8%, including in the 1990s, amid a tight labor market and lots of economic growth. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The 10-year Treasury yield has been zigzagging higher since mid-November when the Fed cut its policy rates again despite accelerating inflation. Since that rate cut, followed up by another rate cut in December, the 10-year yield has risen by 80 basis points, heading, apparently inexorably, for the 5%-line.

The job creation machine is running backwards in some industries and forward in others. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. Structural changes spread across the US economy over time. AI is the big disruptor now, after the internet and the computerization-of-everything shook up the economy for decades. Automation-of-everything has been a force, now more so than ever. And some of those changes show up in shifts of employment. The jobs in each industry are defined by work location.

The Fed can focus on getting its messy inflation-house in order. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. Payrolls at nonfarm employers jumped by 162,000 workers in August from July (blue columns in the chart). The prior two months were revised up substantially: July by 44,000, to a gain (+21,000) from an originally reported drop (-21,000); and June by 11,000.

That looming 7% mortgage rate… By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 6.71%, the highest since July last year, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly measure today for the week through Wednesday September 2. It has been in this 6.0% to 7.0% range since September 2022, except for a few spikes to the upside. These 6-7% mortgage rates are not high historically.

All monetary sins ultimately lead to the currency. There are no miracle exits for the BOJ. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET. The 10-year Japanese Government Bond yield rose to 3.02% today, the highest since August 1996, just about exactly 30 years ago.

Exponential curves for investments burn out, often with a pop. But they can last longer than imagined. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

“…is partly a result of the significant rematching between employers and employees that happened at scale” after Covid. By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.