Bonds and stocks tumble as Bessent’s move to tamp down rising rates backfires, tell me about this news in (https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/bessent-treasury-bonds-repurchase-rcna596819)

In August 2026, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attempted to curb rapidly climbing long-term borrowing costs by announcing that the Treasury Department would aggressively ramp up its government bond repurchase (buyback) program. Under the plan, the Treasury intended to at least double its buyback operations targeting 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year Treasuries, raising the cap from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation.However, the effort quickly backfired, triggering a sharp sell-off in both stocks and government bonds:

• Short-Lived Relief: While bond yields initially dropped on the surprise announcement, the rally lasted less than 24 hours. Long-term yields surged back upwith the 10-year yield settling around 4.7% and the 30-year yield topping 5.25%erasing all initial gains. Major stock indexes (including the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq) tumbled sharply in response to renewed rate fears.
• Limited Firepower vs. Massive Supply: Analysts and market participants viewed the buyback size as a drop in the ocean compared to the tens-of-trillions dollar Treasury market. With hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt being auctioned each quarter to fund large federal deficitsalongside heavy corporate bond issuance from tech companies financing AI infrastructurea few billion dollars in repurchases did not meaningfully shift supply-and-demand dynamics.
• Signaling Official Alarm: Rather than calming investors, the intervention signaled to the market that policymakers were growing anxious about borrowing costs. When Bessent subsequently suggested that the Treasury had a “massive toolkit” and could expand the purchases even further, the comments failed to reassure traders, as the underlying driverspersistent inflation risks, large structural deficits, and climbing energy pricesremained completely unaddressed.