Capital Economics has published a new episode of its Weekly Briefing podcast, titled "The great global bond sell-off – causes, consequences and what comes next," released on August 21, 2026. The episode is available via Spotify or Apple, as well as on other leading podcast platforms.

A bond sell-off means falling bond prices and, by definition, rising yields — the effective interest rate a government pays to borrow. Because long-dated yields such as those on 10-year Treasuries act as reference points for mortgage rates and corporate borrowing costs, sustained moves in major government bond markets ripple through the wider economy and into governments' own debt-servicing costs — which is why the topic is tracked closely by central banks and finance ministries.

The episode, from the London-based macroeconomic research firm, addresses five central questions:

• What was Scott Bessent's Treasury market intervention intended to achieve, and why has it so far fallen short?
• What are the economic forces pushing investors to demand more compensation for holding long-dated government bonds?
• Which economies are most exposed to a fiscal crisis?
• Is the AI credit boom affecting demand for government debt?
• How high could bond yields rise from here?

Each question maps to a live debate in markets. Scott Bessent is the U.S. Treasury Secretary, and his intervention serves as the episode's opening case study. The "compensation" investors demand for holding long-dated debt is known as the term premium — the extra yield required to lend to a government for years rather than roll short-term holdings — a concept at the center of current discussion of elevated yields. The AI question reflects growing attention to borrowing by AI infrastructure and data-center ventures, and whether it competes with sovereign debt for investor capital.

Capital Economics has also published related research on these themes:

• Financial repression to keep a lid on bond yields
• The great consumer confidence conundrum
• The anatomy of the Great Depression of the 1930s

The inclusion of a piece on financial repression — the use of regulation and other policy tools to hold government borrowing costs below where markets would set them, an approach widely employed in the decades after World War II — points to the historical lens the firm applies to today's debate over how heavily indebted governments might manage rising yields. As the episode's title suggests, its answers on what comes next are available in full via the podcast links above.