Leaders | Inversions and aversions

Europe’s economy is more worrying than America’s yield-curve inversion

Bond markets are sounding warnings on both sides of the Atlantic. But the message is much worse in Europe

ON MARCH 22ND Germany’s worst manufacturing survey in seven years sent investors rushing to buy bonds. For the first time in three years yields on German ten-year government debt fell below zero, meaning that investors are willing to pay to hold it. And later that day in America the yield on ten-year Treasury bonds fell beneath that on the three-month variety. The last time that happened was 2007, one of the “inversions” in bond-market yields that preceded each of the past seven American recessions.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Inversions and aversions”

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