Ben Casselman
speaker
242 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 15 Sep
Ben Casselman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Then I'm gonna give you a lower interest rate than somebody else who's out there blowing it all at the bar every night.
That's exactly right.
And so the concern here is that the federal government is maybe being a little more like that person hitting the bar every night and a little bit less like the diligent, responsible worker who's paying their debt.
That's right.
And if you're a riskier bet, you're gonna have to pay a higher interest rate.
And remember, remember that trillion dollars in interest we talked about earlier?
Sure.
Well, the higher the interest rate goes, the more interest we've got to pay, which adds even more to the debt, which makes investors even more nervous about our willingness to pay it.
So they charge an even higher interest rate.
And the risk becomes that you get this ratchet effect where all of a sudden interest rates go up and up and up and interest payments go up and up and up and they're pushing each other higher.
So what I can tell you is that this is what economists and bond investors are spending a ton of their time right now arguing and fighting with each other about, is trying to figure out exactly the question that you're asking.
The reality is it's probably some combination of all of these things.
People are worried about inflation.
They're optimistic about some of the opportunities that exist in the US economy, but they're nervous about the fiscal sustainability of the US government specifically.
But exactly how you tease out those different pieces, which of them is most important, how you weigh them against each other, that is a subject of a lot of debate that is not easy to answer clearly.
Investors never love uncertainty.
Yeah, so look that this increase in bond yields, it's a problem for the White House, right?
It's a problem first just because it's driving up the cost of borrowing for the federal government and and means paying more interest, but it's also increasing the costs for everyday Americans, for you as you think about going out and buying a house and needing to get a mortgage, for example.
That that's exactly right.
And and so uh a few weeks ago when bond yields were really sort of spiking at the end of August, Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary,
Showing 161–180 of 242 · page 9 of 13
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