Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, that he possesses “asymmetric information” about the long end of the U.S. bond market that other investors do not have. He declined to say what it is. In an interview with Sara Eisen on Squawk on the Street, Bessent defended his decision to sharply expand Treasury buybacks by suggesting the recent selloff in long-dated Treasuries reflects a market misreading fundamentals.
What Prompted the Question
On Aug. 19, 2026, Treasury announced it would roughly double the size and frequency of its buyback operations in the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year sectors: per-operation size rising from a $2 billion maximum to a $4 billion minimum, and frequency doubling from 2 to 4 operations per quarter, effective Sept. 9. Long bonds rallied on the announcement. By Thursday’s interview, part of that move had reversed. Eisen noted on air that “we have erased most of the Treasury rally that you got yesterday with that big surprise.”
The yields, per the official U.S. Treasury par curve: the 30-year closed at 5.31% on Aug. 17, 5.28% on Aug. 18, 5.19% on Aug. 19, and 5.23% on Aug. 20. The 10-year sat at 4.69% on Aug. 20, near the top of its trailing-year range.
What Bessent Said
On the buyback, Bessent told CNBC: “We’re trying to signal that we think that this is a thinly traded area of the market, that we’re in August, and there’s been a lot of corporate issuance that’s influenced the market. And we believe that there are many underlying factors in turn that the market is not looking at, and we are going to make a market in these.” He added: “We believe that the yields don’t reflect the underlying fundamentals…. We believe that the liquidity, especially in the 30-year point, is very poor.”
Then: “People have bad information. I have asymmetric information, so I think that the market should think, well, why would we have joined the Japanese in the intervention at this time? Do we know something the market doesn’t know that, in terms of being willing to do you know what I would call a Treasury twist here in terms of the bond market? What do I know that the market doesn’t know? So I think the market’s probably gotten a little ahead of itself, a lot of people not much to do in August.”
Two references need unpacking. “Treasury twist” is Bessent’s own phrase, alluding to the Federal Reserve’s historical Operation Twist, in which the Fed sold shorter-dated securities to buy longer-dated ones to push down long-term yields. Bessent describes Treasury’s buyback activity in similar terms. The Fed is not doing this. Separately, in early August the United States joined Japan in a joint intervention to support the yen, the first such joint action in 15 years. Bessent invokes it as evidence Treasury sees something markets do not.
What He Did Not Say
Bessent never states what the information is. “What do I know that the market doesn’t know?” is posed as a rhetorical question and never answered in the transcript. No specific data point, forecast, or fact is offered. WSJ Fed reporter Nick Timiraos flagged the exchange on X as the notable takeaway of the interview.
Bessent’s Implied Argument
His comments amount to a thesis: the 30-year selloff is a mispricing driven by thin August liquidity and yield-agnostic AI-linked corporate bond issuance crowding the market, rather than a genuine verdict on U.S. fiscal fundamentals. The implicit conclusion is that whatever he knows should mean the selloff stops or reverses.
He also offered a public fiscal case: an announcement on “increased focus on fiscal consolidation” expected “at the end of this week, beginning of next week”; a claim that the fiscal-year 2025 deficit-to-GDP figure came in around 5.7%, inflated by one-time tariff refunds Treasury “won’t have to do that again”; and a framing that upfront expensing of factory and equipment investment is “not government spending” but tax-base-building. None of that is secret.
Circularity in the Evidence
The evidence Bessent points to for having an information edge is the buyback expansion and yen intervention. Both are fully explainable as deliberate policy choices made for publicly stated reasons: signaling, liquidity support, currency stabilization. Neither requires hidden data to explain. A senior official claims an information advantage while declining to identify it, pointing at policy actions he himself authorized as proof.
Market’s Verdict So Far
The 30-year is the exact security Bessent singled out as illiquid and mispriced. Its yield moved from 5.19% on Aug. 19 to 5.23% on Aug. 20. It rose after he made his case. For context, our Aug. 19 coverage laid out the mechanics of the doubled buyback program. Whether “trust me, I know something” persuades a market that Bessent himself describes as thin, distracted, and distorted by corporate issuance is the open question of the next several auctions.
Footnote: Bessent used “asymmetric information” a second time in the same interview, in reference to oil prices and Iran sanctions, suggesting it is a recurring rhetorical device.
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