James Thomson
speaker
2,279 appearances
7 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 12 Jun
James Thomson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Yeah, well, I think the way to think about the bond market is that it's a place where governments and companies and other institutions go to borrow money.
for all sorts of things.
Sometimes it's because they're going into debt.
Sometimes it's just so they can have cash to make normal things work.
So the government goes there or a corporation goes there and it offers an interest rate.
You lend me a hundred bucks and I'm going to pay you an interest rate of 3.5% a year.
And then you'll also get your money back.
Sounds like a pretty good deal.
Investors can choose whether they want to lend the money or not to that borrower.
And of course, governments traditionally have been seen as the safest borrowers because they've got these magical printing presses that allows them to keep printing money.
Now, what happens when bond yields rise is that's a signal that there's a bit of concern or investors are demanding a bigger risk premium for the privilege of lending that money.
And what we've seen this week is that bond yields have risen quite sharply around the world, everywhere from America to Japan to Australia to France to Britain, all for slightly different reasons.
Obviously, in Australia, we've had the budget.
In the UK, for example, there's a prime ministerial crisis going on.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, looks like he's going to be tipped out at some stage.
But underlying all this is two common issues across all these countries.
First, most governments have got too much debt.
So investors are demanding a little bit more return to lend money to those governments.
And second, investors are worried that inflation is getting out of control.
It was already sticky and now we've got the energy shock.
Showing 1181–1200 of 2,279 · page 60 of 114
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