The government is trying to pull down long-term borrowing costs by buying back its own bonds, and the market is not cooperating — bad news for anyone with a mortgage, car loan, or credit card.

• The Treasury is buying back long-term debt while selling more short-term debt, the same move that failed a few weeks ago.
• Traders see the gimmick and are selling bonds anyway, pushing government bond yields to their highest since 2023.
• Those yields set the baseline for mortgage, car loan, and credit card rates, so ordinary borrowing gets more expensive.
• The debt is now $40 trillion, with a trillion a year going just to pay interest, made worse by tax cuts that cut revenue and by war spending.
• Bessent is also propping up the Japanese yen to stop Japan — the biggest foreign holder of US debt — from dumping treasuries; that trade is working for now, but it annoyed European allies, who are starting to sell US debt too.

Outlook: Borrowing costs stay high and keep climbing unless the government shrinks its deficit, and more short-term debt only makes the next rollover more expensive.