Monday, October 12, 2026
Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 economics Nobel on Monday for the microeconomic foundations of stabilisation policy. The Academy credits Woodford, among others, with proposing forward guidance. On 28 August Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said the practice "has overstayed its welcome."
Freddie Mac's 30-year fixed rate averaged 7.40 per cent this week, up from 7.28 per cent and from 6.30 per cent a year ago. It is the highest since November 2023 and the seventh straight weekly rise. Buyers are responding by stepping back.
The federal government paid $1.36 trillion in gross interest on its debt in fiscal year 2026, up 11.5 percent from the prior year and more than Washington sent the states for Medicaid. At $3.73 billion a day, the cost of carrying the debt has become a top-five budget line by any measure.
Minutes of the Federal Reserve's September meeting show every participant supported raising rates to a range of 3.75 to 4 per cent, and most expect another increase by the end of the year. Tariffs, the main inflation story of 2025, are fading. Spending on artificial intelligence and energy are taking their place.
The average 30-year mortgage rate rose to 7.28 per cent this week, Freddie Mac said, the highest since November 2023 and the biggest weekly jump since October 2022. The rate is the same as three years ago. What produces it is not. In 2023 lenders charged almost three points over the ten-year Treasury. Now they charge about two, and the ten-year is doing the rest.
The 30-year Treasury yield closed at 5.49 per cent on Friday, its highest since the Treasury resumed issuing the bond in February 2006, and the ten-year ended the week 21 basis points higher than it started. The University of Michigan's final September survey has year-ahead inflation expectations at 4.6 per cent, up from 4.0 per cent in August, and sentiment at 48.1.
On Monday the S&P 500 rose 1.5 percent, the Nasdaq closed at a record, crude fell more than 4 percent and the ten-year yield slipped. The two-year Treasury yield, the maturity most tied to the Fed, closed at 4.76 percent, exactly where it was on Friday and its highest close since July 2024.
The ten-year Treasury settled at 5 percent on Tuesday, its highest since 2007. On Wednesday it fell, equity futures rose across the board, Brent gave up about 5 percent and gold dropped $35. A rate rise is supposed to make risk more expensive. This one was received as insurance against something worse.
The Federal Open Market Committee raised its target range a quarter point to 3.75 to 4 percent on Wednesday, its first increase since 2023, on a 12-0 vote. The statement says inflation remains elevated and promises the Committee "will deliver price stability." Twelve of eighteen officials expect another increase this year.
Fitch put the trailing twelve-month default rate across 1,300 private credit borrowers at 6.3 percent at the end of August, a record, with 14 default events in the month. Healthcare providers and industrial manufacturers are both running near 10 percent. On Wednesday the Federal Reserve raised the rate almost all of that debt is priced against.
The Federal Reserve decides on Wednesday whether to raise its benchmark rate from 3.50 to 3.75 percent. After Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole speech, betting on a hike was roughly even. After August's core inflation came in above forecast and oil rose toward $108, futures priced it at about 85 percent on Monday. For households, the effects arrive at very different speeds.
Fed funds futures put the chance of a quarter-point rise at the September meeting at about 59 percent. Three months ago the same market was arguing about the size of a cut. Brent above $100 and the ten-year at its highest close since 2023 are the reason, and an energy shock is the one shock a central bank cannot fix.
Mortgage balances fell by $74bn in the second quarter, to $13.1 trillion. Households do not usually retire debt when the alternative uses of cash pay this well, and the composition of who is paying and who cannot refinance explains more about the housing market than any measure of affordability.
The funds rate has sat at 3.5 to 3.75 percent while the 30-year Treasury reached 5.31 percent last month, its highest in 19 years, and the 10-year went to levels last seen in 2023. A governor says he is inclined to hold. The long end is not arguing with him. It has stopped listening.
The ten-year Treasury reached its highest yield since November 2023 on Wednesday. On the same day Japanese ten-year debt passed 3 percent for the first time in thirty years, German yields hit a fourteen-year high and British yields an eighteen-year one. Four governments with four different problems do not usually move together.
Debt-to-GDP is higher than it was at the end of the Second World War and two percent of Americans call it the country's biggest problem. Sixteen years ago, at a third the size, it was a mass movement. Salience is not a function of size.
Futures markets have spent the summer walking back easing expectations, and portfolio managers are adjusting duration, credit and cash accordingly.