Experience Stern | Faculty & Research

The rise in long-term rates around the world is worrying finance ministries and Treasury departments. Higher rates not only make servicing the rising public and private debt burdens more costly, but also put economic growth at risk.

Independent central banks are reluctant to intervene by resuming past quantitative programmes of buying long-term bonds, or even cutting benchmark policy rates given above-target inflation in many leading economies. So backdoor quantitative easing via new forms of public debt management has become an option for financial ministries.

During Joe Biden’s administration, the US Treasury department started to change the composition of public debt issuance with more short-term offerings.

Read the full Financial Times article.
___
Nouriel Roubini is a Professor Emeritus of Economics and International Business and the Robert Stansky Research Faculty Fellow.