Fox Business reporter Charlie Gasparino said, citing Wall Street executives familiar with the matter, that Bessent’s real objective is not to reverse the broader direction of U.S. Treasury yields but to intimidate bond shorts and create a pre-election decline in rates. The reported playbook includes Treasury buybacks, changes to issuance structure and even scrapping ultra-long maturities such as the 20-year bond in an effort to push bond prices higher and force commodity trading advisors, or CTAs, into large-scale short covering. According to the figures cited, CTA and trend-following funds are already holding near-record bearish positions across the global bond market, measured at roughly $155 million in DV01 terms. If prices rise by two standard deviations within a month, the resulting short covering and renewed buying could total $150 million in DV01, which would mark a record high. Gasparino’s report adds that the effort has so far had limited impact, with Treasury yields continuing to rise until the Treasury disclosed it could use as much as $954 billion from the TGA as support. Critics argue the scale is too small relative to deficits, debt and inflation, while tensions between the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are also said to be growing.

Arthur Hayes argues that the signal for Bitcoin is not a political slogan from Washington but the level of the US 10-year Treasury yield. In his latest piece, Hayes says both former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and current Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent end up choosing liquidity-creating measures when the 10-year yield nears 5%, even if their public messaging differs. He revisits late 2023, when Yellen increased Treasury bill issuance and helped pull money out of the Federal Reserve’s reverse repo facility, and contrasts that with Bessent’s current toolkit, including a larger long-end buyback program and support for broader use of the FIMA facility. Hayes argues that these steps are all aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs from rising too far. His broader claim is straightforward: when the Treasury and the Fed lean toward yield suppression, dollar liquidity expands, and that tends to lift risk assets, including Bitcoin. Hayes points to the drop in reverse repo balances from about $2.5 trillion to $100 billion by the time Bessent took office on Jan. 20, 2025, and says that liquidity shift helped support both the Nasdaq 100 and Bitcoin. He adds that if Bessent escalates support as market stress builds, Bitcoin could respond in the same direction again.

US Treasury Secretary Bessent said on Monday that the Treasury will carry out its next bond buyback on Sept. 9 and suggested more operations could follow. The date is not the launch of a brand-new program, but the point when the Treasury’s previously announced expansion of long-dated bond buybacks takes effect. Under the plan unveiled on Aug. 19, liquidity support buybacks for nominal Treasuries in the 10- to 20-year and 20- to 30-year sectors will at least double, with the cap for each operation raised from $2 billion to at least $4 billion through Nov. 4. Markets are also weighing a CNBC report that the Treasury is considering tapping the Treasury General Account, which stands at about $950 billion, as a potential funding source for the expanded program. Treasury officials cited in the report did not disclose how much of the TGA might be used or when. The funding question matters because investors had largely assumed the Treasury would finance long-bond repurchases by issuing more short-term bills. Even so, the recent rally in long-dated Treasuries after the Aug. 19 announcement faded quickly, with prices falling over the following two sessions as attention returned to the US fiscal deficit, long-term debt supply and inflation pressures.

U.S. stocks split sharply on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising for a second straight session while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed lower and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped nearly 4%. The main macro driver came from U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent, who said nearly $1 trillion from the Treasury General Account would be used to buy back long-dated bonds and also announced new economic sanctions on Iran. That combination pulled long-end Treasury yields lower, but investors focused more on geopolitical risk than on the rate move, sending funds out of AI hardware and broader technology shares and into gold and Bitcoin. The market also absorbed fresh Nvidia headlines ahead of its earnings due after Wednesday’s close. The company reportedly told hyperscale clients including Microsoft and Google that AI server prices will rise by more than 15% next year, and it is also said to be planning an investment in AI search company Perplexity. At the same time, Samsung Electronics fell 8.7% in South Korea after its shareholder return plan missed expectations, adding pressure to memory and semiconductor names. Traders are now watching two immediate catalysts: the U.S. Conference Board consumer confidence reading for August and the continued repricing of expectations around Nvidia’s Blackwell shipments, data center guidance, and AI capital spending.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised the per-operation cap on Treasury buybacks for 10-year, 20-year and 30-year bonds from $2 billion to at least $4 billion after long-dated yields climbed to their highest levels in years. The announcement briefly pushed the 30-year yield down, but the move did not hold, and benchmark yields remained close to recent highs. What did move sharply were other assets: Bitcoin climbed to nearly $80,000, gold approached a three-month high, and XRP posted a 51% weekly gain. Market participants read the policy step less as a lasting fix for the bond market and more as a strong signal that managing U.S. debt costs has become an active policy priority. That fed a weaker-dollar narrative and renewed interest in scarce, non-sovereign stores of value. The debate then widened to how the Treasury might fund the program, including whether it could tap the Treasury General Account, and whether the sudden shift broke with the department’s long-standing “regular and predictable” debt-management approach.

Fox Business reported that, according to Wall Street executives familiar with the matter, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to take extreme measures against bond market participants betting on the long end of Treasuries and trying to drive the 10-year yield to 5%. The reported tools include Treasury buybacks, more short-term bill issuance, and possibly canceling long-dated maturities such as 20-year bonds. The source said the measures would be short-term, aimed at preventing yields from rising further and avoiding the drag of high rates on growth ahead of the midterm elections. Wall Street figures also said the approach does not solve the underlying issue: U.S. debt has reached $40 trillion, while AI infrastructure spending is intensifying competition for capital. The report added that the rest of the Trump administration is not expected to pursue fiscal tightening, with the longer-term plan still centered on growth and higher tax revenue to work down the debt. Earlier reporting said Bessent was also focusing on the Treasury General Account as a tool to help pay for Treasuries and influence long-end yields.

BlockBeats reported on August 24 that analyst qinbafrank pushed back against the market view that the U.S. Treasury could tap nearly $1 trillion to fund a larger Treasury buyback program. He said the amount actually available is far smaller. Based on 2024 cash-flow data, roughly $700 billion plus is needed to keep the Treasury General Account within a one-week operating range, leaving only about $200 billion that could be deployed in the near term. He also warned that once that money is spent, the Treasury would need to rebuild the TGA by issuing debt again, which would draw liquidity back out of the market. That means any short-term boost from TGA spending could be followed by renewed pressure from the replenishment process. qinbafrank added that Bitcoin is closely tied to dollar liquidity, so TGA drawdowns may support risk assets while TGA refills tighten conditions again.

The US Treasury may draw on the Treasury General Account, or TGA, which holds close to $1 trillion, to finance its recently expanded government bond purchase program, according to CNBC, citing two senior Treasury officials. The potential use of the account would give the department greater capacity to influence long-term bond yields and could alter how markets view the buyback strategy. Last week, the Treasury unexpectedly said it would raise repurchases of long-dated off-the-run securities from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the size of those operations could exceed the new minimum, though the department did not say at the time how it would pay for the purchases. Many market participants had expected the Treasury to fund the program by increasing issuance of short-term Treasury bills. If the TGA is used instead, that would mark a different funding route. The TGA is effectively the federal government's checking account at the Federal Reserve, with balances sourced from existing tax revenue.