Two different politicians from opposite sides of the aisle each held a press event 8 days apart on the same idea.

On July 27, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood in Brooklyn holding a bunch of bananas. He announced 5 city-owned grocery stores, one per borough, selling food at 30% below retail. The crowd cheered.

On August 19, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Washington would at least double its buybacks of long-dated Treasury bonds. The 30-year yield had crept to uncomfortable highs, and that simply wouldn’t do. Wall Street cheered, too… for about 24 hours.

The right called Mamdani a socialist. And yet, they called Bessent a market technician.

But if you strip away Bessent’s tailoring, they’re running the same play. One of them thinks the price of bread is wrong. The other thinks the price of money is wrong. Both reached for the same tool: the state’s thumb, pressed firmly on the market’s scale.

Ah, but surely it must be permissible for a gentleman to fiddle with the market, you say? This version of corporatism, or socialism, or whatever you want to call it, arrives with a Treasury seal instead of a Little Red Book. But it’ll fail just the same. It just fails in a pinstriped suit.

Two Men, Two Caps

I’ll say this for Mamdani: at least he’s honest about what he is. This economic illiterate wants to freeze the rent on a million apartments starting October 1st. He’d also like to open city stores that critics are already calling ration shops. Oh, and don’t forget taxing second homes in the city. He believes prices are a political choice, rather than a market mechanism, and he says so out loud.

Bessent’s idea needs more translation.

The Treasury’s buybacks target 10- to 30-year bonds and run from September 9th through November 4th. The old limit was $2 billion per operation. The new minimum is $4 billion, and Bessent went on TV to stress it could be more. He swears this is about liquidity, not yield curve control (YCC).

Nobody bought it. Former PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian read the move as YCC wearing a fake mustache. Evercore’s Krishna Guha called it a weak Operation Twist. JPMorgan warned that the Treasury was walking away from its oldest promise, that debt issuance stays regular and predictable, in favor of ad hoc market management.

Traders coined a new phrase for it: the Bessent put.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, when a government official finds himself on the side of moral hazard-addled investors, it’s time to pause and reflect.

The Yellen in the Mirror

In 2024, Bessent hammered his predecessor, Janet Yellen, for issuing short-term bills when interest rates were at rock bottom rather than issuing long-term debt to lock in those historically low rates. That would’ve helped the government’s fiscal situation and made Bessent’s life at the Treasury much easier. He asserted she was putting her thumb on the market’s scale to hide the true cost of Washington’s overspending. He was intellectually correct and morally right.

So how is the Treasury funding its new buybacks? It can’t print money. That's the Fed’s racket. Instead, it’s issuing more short-term bills and using the cash to retire long bonds.

In other words, it’s the exact maneuver Bessent condemned, that Bessent will now perform at a greater scale.

And for some situational irony, the national debt crossed $40 trillion the same week the policy was announced.

Bessent isn’t a fool. That makes this worse. He’s a Soros-trained macro trader. He knows what a rigged price looks like, because he spent his career hunting for them. The system didn’t fool him. It captured him, like it does every unsuspecting politician. Every Treasury Secretary eventually figures out the long bond yield is a political price. And sooner or later, every one of them succumbs to the temptation of market manipulation.

The Market Called Both Bluffs

The ice water of reality almost immediately splashed both men in the face.

Bessent’s announcement knocked yields down for a few hours. Within a day, the 10-year and 30-year had erased the entire move and closed higher than before he opened his gob. The 30-year sat back above 5.2%. The market looked at $4 billion per operation against trillions in supply and guffawed.

Mamdani’s month ran about as well. A Staten Island judge blocked his second home tax. Landlords sued the city over the rent freeze. And on Monday, a coalition of bodega and small grocery owners, many of them immigrants, sued to stop the city-run stores from ever opening. Their argument was simple: no private shop can compete with a store that pays no rent or utilities and sells below cost on the taxpayer’s dime. Of course, they are correct.

The small businessmen Mamdani claims to champion are now suing him to survive. Oh, the irony.

Why It Always Fails

Prices are information. The 30-year yield is the market’s weighted opinion on $40 trillion of debt, sticky inflation, and a government that spends as if its bill will never arrive.

Bessent can try to cap the price, but he can’t change the market’s ultimate verdict.

Mamdani’s 30% discount doesn't make food cheaper. It just moves the cost from the buyer to the taxpayer, and drives the honest grocer out of the neighborhood.

Bessent’s buybacks don’t make America a better credit. They swap long debt for short debt, pile up risk, and tell every foreign bondholder that DC is at odds with its own price signals.

There’s one more wrinkle.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh wants the bond market’s honest opinion, so he can set the Fed’s monetary policy against a market-discovered price. Bessent now stands between Warsh and that number, interfering with the signal. Bessent’s and Warsh’s old boss, Stanley Druckenmiller, doesn’t approve. Neither do the rest of the bond vigilantes.

Wrap Up

Spare me the kabuki theater where one half of the political class faints over a socialist mayor’s grocery stores while the other half applauds this bond-buying scheme.

The difference between Mamdani and Bessent isn’t a matter of principle. It’s merely the difference in perception between an avowed socialist and an alleged free marketeer.

The gentleman’s price control ends the same way the commoner’s does.

The gentleman just gets better press on the way down.