A rare public rift has opened between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and one of the investors who shaped his early career. Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire who worked alongside Bessent at George Soros’s fund management firm in the 1990s, has accused his former colleague of trying to artificially suppress long-term borrowing costs rather than manage the government’s debt sensibly.
A bigger buyback programme
On 19 August 2026, the US Treasury announced it would double the size of its buyback operations for bonds maturing in 10 to 30 years, from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. Buybacks let the Treasury repurchase older, less-traded bonds, officially to keep the market functioning smoothly during periods of stress.
The move came after long-term yields, including on the 30-year bond, climbed to their highest levels in roughly 19 years, since around 2007, according to Benzinga. At the time of reporting, the 30-year yield stood at 5.23%, the 10-year at 4.70% and the 2-year at 4.24%.
‘Price management’ not liquidity support
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Druckenmiller rejected the Treasury’s framing. He argued the expanded buybacks amount to defending bond prices against economic reality rather than addressing genuine market liquidity problems, according to CoinDesk’s account of the piece.
This wasn’t liquidity management, it was price management.
Governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose.
Druckenmiller contends that elevated long-term yields reflect underlying fiscal conditions, strong nominal growth combined with persistent deficits and a rising debt load, rather than a shortage of buyers. US federal debt has now surpassed $40 trillion for the first time, according to CoinDesk.
If the 30-year must trade at 5.5% to clear, that isn’t a crisis. It is an invoice.
A call for deficit reform
Rather than expanding intervention in bond markets, Druckenmiller recommends the Treasury scale buybacks back down to small, scheduled operations focused purely on liquidity, and instead concentrate on reducing the primary budget deficit, including reform of entitlement spending such as pensions and healthcare programmes.
The public disagreement is notable given the two men’s history. Druckenmiller and Bessent worked together at Soros Fund Management, where Bessent is widely credited with learning much of his macroeconomic approach under Druckenmiller’s guidance. Neither Bessent nor the Treasury Department has publicly responded to the criticism, according to the reports reviewed for this article.
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