![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2290716824-e1787299446499.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Good morning. The era of cheap money is officially over. The bond market, not the Fed, is giving the clearest signal to CEOs that their borrowing costs are going up. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent\u2019s $4 billion buyback plan for longer-dated government debt managed to calm bond markets for barely a day before we saw another sell-off, pushing up the yield on the 30-year Treasury. With the U.S. national debt now topping $40 trillion, few seem to share Bessent\u2019s view that \u201cwe can grow our way\u201d out of the fiscal burden.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
To some extent, skittish bond markets are another example of growing risks\u2014and costs\u2014in the U.S. economy. It\u2019s even more likely that the Fed will raise interest rates when it meets again in September. Higher yields mean Washington is now paying close to $3.2 billion a day in interest on the debt. It raises the mortgage rates that are weighing on consumers and builders like KB Home, which CEO Rob McGibney recently spoke about in this column.<\/p>\n
Other implications to think about? First, the Trump Administration\u2019s fiscal policy.\u00a0 Lower taxes and regulatory burdens have certainly helped to fuel corporate spending, with the Treasury department reporting that business investment rose nearly 10% in the first half of the year.\u00a0 But there are trade-offs to every decision. The evaporating tariff windfall was a $200 billion hit to this year\u2019s budget. Add in an atmosphere of overall uncertainty, America\u2019s record level of debt and deep concern over this administration\u2019s commitment to ethics and rule of law. They point to higher borrowing costs in the longer term and other sources of friction for leaders.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s AI spending. Companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle are issuing record amounts of debt to fund AI infrastructure. There\u2019s been about $500 billion in AI-related debt issuance so far this year, according to Goldman Sachs. Alphabet raised almost $32 billion in debt in 24 hours in February, including a 100-year bond. As with the equity markets, the gap between the hyperscalers and the rest of corporate America is widening. Yes, investors are starting to distinguish between the platforms and the infrastructure around them, between proven cash flows and promises that have yet to materialize. But they\u2019re gravitating to the same haves and have-nots of the equity markets, which means tech giants are likely to continue driving up costs and tightening credit for other companies\u2014especially in the current climate.<\/p>\n
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/p>\n
Top leadership news<\/p>\n
Walmart uses tariff refunds to cut prices<\/p>\n
Walmart has received nearly $3 billion in tariff refunds and says it will reinvest the money in lower prices, particularly in groceries and general merchandise. The retailer has more than 11,000 items on \u201crollback,\u201d its term for temporary price reductions, as higher gas prices and more cautious consumers weigh on traffic.<\/p>\n
Supermicro clears senior management in chip-smuggling review, but the scrutiny is far from over<\/p>\n
Supermicro\u2019s board says it found no evidence that current members of senior management knew about the alleged chip smuggling scheme tied to cofounder Wally Liaw, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawfully diverting Nvidia hardware to China. But the issue isn\u2019t over; the company still faces a federal grand jury subpoena, a request for documents by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and a parallel Taiwan investigation.<\/p>\n
OPM boss leading Trump’s RTO push says he hid his work-from-home backdrop to avoid blowback<\/p>\n
Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor, a key architect of the Trump administration’s return-to-office push, admitted in an audio recording reviewed by Fortune that he filmed one of his \u201cFederal Friday\u201d videos against a blank wall because he feared criticism for appearing to work from home. “I was in my bedroom,” Kupor said, explaining that he sought “a plain corner with a white wall” so his house would not be recognizable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The markets<\/p>\n
S&P 500 futures are up 0.3% this morning. The last session fell 0.9%. South Korea\u2019s KOSPI is up 0.9%, Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 is down 0.3%, while Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng Index rose 1.2%. Vietnam\u2019s VN-Index jumped 2.0%. India\u2019s NIFTY 50 is flat, while the STOXX Europe 600 is up 0.1% in early trading. Bitcoin continues its rise to above $78,000.<\/p>\n
Around the watercooler<\/p>\n
Exclusive: Venezuela, sick with hyperinflation, engages the \u2018money doctor\u2019 Steve Hanke for a dose of dollarization medicine by Shawn Tully<\/p>\n
Airwallex expands from cross-border payments to autonomous finance\u2014though president Lucy Liu says it\u2019s still \u2018not the best time\u2019 for an IPO by Nicholas Gordon<\/p>\n
Scott Bessent on the national debt: \u2018There\u2019s nothing magic about the $40 trillion number\u2019 by Nick Lichtenberg<\/p>\n
Moderna co-founder is a billionaire once again at $1.7 billion\u2014he once turned down 20 high-paying job offers to \u2018have more of an impact on the world\u2019 by Emma Burleigh<\/p>\n
Today’s edition of CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Nicholas Gordon, and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n
#bond #market #sending #CEOs #blunt #message #Borrowing #costs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Good morning. The era of cheap money is officially over. The bond market, not the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[855,1286,883,1277,1281,1364,33,574,2485],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}