*By Bridgette Webb*
Investors overseas are losing their appetite for U.S. debt.
Foreign buyers are reducing their purchases of Treasuries and now own just over 40 percent of the debt outstanding, the lowest mark in 15 years. And if demand dries up, that could lead to higher interest rates ー something that can clearly spook investors.
While it may be easy to blame the trade war for the drop, Daniel Kruger, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, said there's another culprit.
"It's not so much the trade war as the stronger dollar," Kruger said Wednesday in an interview on Cheddar.
"It has to do with the Federal Reserve, which has been aggressively raising interest rates."
Fed officials have raised rates three times this year, most recently, in September to a range between 2 and 2.25 percent. Experts believe the central bank will do it again in December.
President Trump has been an outspoken critic of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's decision to stay the course of rate hikes. The president recently claimed that Powell looked "like he's happy raising interest rates," and that he was endangering the U.S. economy.
China owns over $1 trillion of U.S. debt ー a point of concern that may grow even more worrisome as trade tensions continue. If the country dumps its holdings, that could spark a drop in bond prices and a consequent spike in borrowing costs.
For Kruger, it's not an immediate issue, but it may pose a more serious long-term risk.
"If China were to try to use its Treasury holdings as a diplomatic tool as a way to strike out at the U.S., they probably wouldn't tell us about it," he said.
"And the data that we get on foreign holdings of treasuries kind of lags. It would be a couple of months before we noticed."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
