Back in 1993, the great Democratic strategist James Carville—famous for his quip, “It’s the economy, stupid”—told the Wall Street Journal that he used to think that if reincarnation existed, he wanted to come back as the president, the pope, or a .400 baseball hitter.
“But now I would like to come back as the bond market,” he said. “You can intimidate everybody.”
Indeed, in the late spring of 2026, bond investors seem to be throwing an early 1990s-style fit again as the 30-year Treasury yield has hit its highest point since before the Great Recession: 5.198%.
It’s tempting, analysts say, to paint another narrative like that of the 1993s, when bond investors drew yields higher on fears that Bill Clinton would let the deficit go wild. But this isn’t Carville’s bond market, Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, told Fortune.
“I get that the sort of story, of a couple guys in a room saying inflation is going to go higher, we’re going to fight back against the government, I get why that’s like an ongoing narrative,” LeBas said. But that group—the so-called bond vigilantes, a phrase coined by economist Ed Yardeni—“doesn’t exist,” according to LeBas.
