You remember the old joke about the desperate criminal who takes a whole family hostage, and then holds a gun up to his own temple and tells them to do what he says? When the mom and all the kids can’t contain their snickering, the desperado snarls: “Don’t laugh! You’re next…”

That would be Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent… and his boss.

After the Treasury Department last week doubled its re-purchases of its own Treasuries coming due, in a desperate effort to drive yields down, yields actually rose. High yields (and interest rates) translate into soaring interest payments on the $40 trillion government debt, which already is about $1 trillion per year.

Bessent has now announced that he is going to triple re-purchases, in an effort that is also doomed to fail. As the London Economist magazine wrote on Sept. 11: “Surging bond yields presage pain—and not just for bond investors…. A more long-running concern is that many governments are unable to get their debts under control. America’s budget deficit is around 6% of GDP, even though the economy is strong. And on September 9th. President Donald Trump pledged to pay American adults $5,000 each if the Republican Party maintains control of both houses of Congress at midterm elections in November, a splurge that would cost $1.2 trillion (3.5% of GDP).” In other words, the government debt, already above $40 trillion, would climb by another $1.2 trillion.

The City of London mouthpiece sees other factors at work in the bond-yield crisis. “The building of artificial-intelligence data centers is sucking up hundreds of billions of dollars…. This year investment-grade borrowers are forecast to take out $1.9 trillion in debt, an increase of more than a third on 2025.”