Scott Bessent risks undermining Treasury’s credibility, says Levin

When the person running America’s finances starts acting like a day trader trying to jawbone a stock price, people tend to notice. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan J. Levin is making the case that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s aggressive push to lower borrowing costs through market intervention is doing more harm than good, potentially eroding the very credibility that makes US government debt the bedrock of global finance.

The core of Levin’s criticism centers on Bessent’s plan to double the Treasury’s purchases of long-dated bonds, scaling up from roughly $2B to more than $4B per operation starting in September 2026. Levin describes the strategy as a “desperate attempt” to wrestle down yields that have stubbornly climbed since Bessent took office, calling it inconsistent with the Secretary’s own pre-office rhetoric about fiscal discipline.

The yield problem that won’t go away

The numbers paint a fairly uncomfortable picture for Bessent. When he was nominated for the role, the 10-year Treasury yield sat around 4.20%. By late August 2026, that figure had climbed to approximately 4.73-4.75%, hovering near 19-year highs.

Bessent’s response has been to lean into bond buybacks with increasing aggression. The logic, at least on paper, is straightforward: if the Treasury buys its own bonds in the open market, it creates demand, pushes prices up, and drives yields down. It’s a tool that exists in the Treasury’s toolkit for legitimate reasons, primarily to manage cash balances and improve market liquidity.

But Levin’s argument is that Bessent has stretched the tool well beyond its intended purpose. Using buybacks at this scale to actively suppress yields starts to look less like prudent debt management and more like a central bank-style intervention, except without the central bank’s mandate or independence.

Credibility is the real currency

Levin points to a fundamental contradiction in Bessent’s approach. Before taking office, Bessent positioned himself as a market-savvy fiscal hawk who understood the importance of credible institutions. He was confirmed by the Senate on January 27, 2025, with a comfortable 68-29 vote, a bipartisan margin that reflected broad confidence in his credentials as a former hedge fund manager.

Yet the playbook he’s running now looks more like the kind of short-term market manipulation he might have criticized from the private sector. Levin suggests that Bessent’s Wall Street instincts, the impulse to trade around a position and manage price action, are precisely the wrong instincts for someone managing the full faith and credit of the United States.

Critics also argue that Bessent’s yield-suppression efforts could work at cross-purposes with the Fed’s inflation mandate. If the Treasury is artificially loosening financial conditions while the Fed is trying to maintain them, you get a tug-of-war that confuses markets and undermines both institutions.

The 10-year yield’s climb from 4.20% to nearly 4.75% on Bessent’s watch suggests that, so far, the market isn’t buying what the Treasury is selling.

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