What is causing the global bond sell-off?

WHEN glass-half-empty types look at bond yields surging around the world, they blame feckless politicians. In America, President Donald Trump is presiding over huge deficits and trying to bully the US Federal Reserve into easy money.

Politicians elsewhere are similarly blase about borrowing, and only a bit less about central-bank independence. Higher yields reflect, on this theory, investors’ alarm that all this will lead to higher inflation.

The glass-half-full view, championed by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is that bond markets are reacting to prospects of faster long-term economic growth.