Fiscal dominance arises when fiscal financing needs constrain monetary policy's ability to pursue price stability. This tracker follows fiscal pressures through Treasury markets and debt-service costs, and reads their implications through the cost and availability of capital that funds the innovation economy. Fiscal stress alone does not establish fiscal dominance; the stronger test is whether fiscal financing needs become a binding constraint on monetary policy and the price of capital.
Hero readouts colored by danger direction (rising stress = red), not the asset-price up=green convention — see Sources & Methodology.
A larger share of Treasury debt matured within a year than it does today, but the debt stock was much smaller. Relatively high refinancing concentration therefore translated into a much smaller dollar obligation.
Crisis financing increased reliance on short-term bills. Treasury subsequently extended maturities, reducing the percent coming due within a year. The debt stock nevertheless persisted and grew: refinancing became less concentrated, while the dollar amount requiring refinancing increased.
Pandemic borrowing produced another sharp increase in near-term maturities. That percentage spike receded, but the dollar obligation remained substantially larger. Today, roughly one-third of marketable Treasury debt matures within a year—a historically ordinary percent applied to a much larger base. The fiscal cost depends on the rates at which that debt is refinanced.
High-yield history begins in 2000, supplying pre-crisis context. U.S. sovereign CDS begins in November 2008, after the rupture was already underway. Both measures were elevated during the financial crisis.
U.S. CDS generally declined to low levels. Corporate credit still experienced stress episodes, including the pandemic, without a comparable sustained rise in sovereign CDS.
The debt-ceiling standoff produced a sharp CDS spike. Protection pricing subsequently remained above its earlier low-premium baseline while high-yield spreads were relatively contained, with episodes of widening.
The charts describe financing pressure. They do not confirm fiscal dominance on their own.
The observation window begins in January 2024, the framework's proposed emerging-regime boundary. Earlier history supplies context, not a regime threshold. Fiscal dominance need not produce high yields or weak auctions: policy accommodation can suppress market prices.
Confirmation requires evidence of a fiscal financing constraint, a monetary-policy response linked to it, and consideration of other explanations. The current page monitors pressures; it does not present a completed confirmation test.
Current values are dated beneath each subtitle. Subtitles describe the measure's purpose and stay valid as observations change. Chart axes are fitted to the displayed series and may begin above or below zero; where an axis is fitted, its full-series range is given below. A shaded fill is used only where zero lies inside the axis, so the shaded area measures distance from zero rather than from a display choice. Columns are used where each observation is a separate period; lines where the quantity is continuous and being sampled.
| Panel | Source / frequency | Construction and limits |
|---|---|---|
| Treasury yields | Federal Reserve · DGS30 / DGS10 via FRED · month-end | 30Y and 10Y constant-maturity yields; the band is the 30s–10s spread. Full 30Y range since Jan 2000: 1.20–6.49%. A yield increase does not identify its fiscal cause. The 5% line marks a widely watched nominal 10-year Treasury yield level. It is a market reference, not a validated fiscal-dominance threshold. |
| Auction demand | U.S. Treasury auction results · 30Y and 10Y per auction | Nominal 30-year bonds and 10-year notes only — new issues and reopenings. TIPS excluded — 43 of 262 at 30 years, 134 of 413 at 10 years. Bid-to-cover: Treasury's reported ratio, (tendered − SOMA) ÷ (accepted − SOMA). Dealer share: primary dealer accepted ÷ competitive accepted — the denominator excludes non-competitive bids and the Fed's SOMA add-on. Separate axes. Missing bidder detail yields a missing value, never 0%. Full range: 30Y 1.77–3.05× since Feb 2001; 10Y 1.22–3.72× since Feb 2000. |
| Bid dispersion | U.S. Treasury auction results · 30Y and 10Y per auction | Nominal 30-year bonds and 10-year notes only, same filter as auction demand. (high yield − median accepted yield) × 100, in basis points, from Treasury's high_yield and avg_med_yield fields. Not a true auction tail, which requires a contemporaneous when-issued yield. |
| Term premium | Federal Reserve Bank of New York · ACM term premium (ACMTP10) · monthly | Model-estimated duration compensation. Estimates depend on model assumptions; zero is not a floor. |
| Net interest / tax receipts | U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, NIPA Table 3.2, via FRED/ALFRED · quarterly · vintage 30 Sep 2026 | 100 × (A091RC1 line 33 − B094RC1 line 14) ÷ W006RC1 line 2. Net-series coverage Q1 1960–Q2 2026; the 2026Q2 reading sits at the 71st percentile of that history. |
| Primary deficit / GDP | U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, NIPA Table 3.2 and GDP, via FRED/ALFRED · quarterly · vintage 30 Sep 2026 | NIPA basis: 100 × −(AD02RC1 line 49 + (A091RC1 line 33 − B094RC1 line 14)) ÷ GDP — federal net borrowing less net interest, where net interest is interest payments less interest receipts, the same measure as the net interest panel. Positive indicates a primary deficit. Each quarter is a seasonally adjusted annual rate, not a 12-month total; fiscal-year budget measures are not directly comparable. |
| Interest–growth gap | Federal Reserve Board (H.15) via FRED · DGS3MO, DGS2, DGS5, DGS10, DGS20, DGS30; bill share: U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data (MSPD); average interest rate: U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data; nominal GDP growth: S&P Global Market Intelligence, U.S. Monthly GDP Index · monthly | Marginal proxy: bill share × 3-month yield + remaining share × equal-weight 2/5/10/20/30Y blend. No actual issuance weights. Shared endpoint Jul 2026. |
| Treasury debt held by the public / GDP | Treasury Debt to the Penny; S&P Global Market Intelligence, U.S. Monthly GDP Index · monthly | 100 × last available Treasury public-debt stock in the month ÷ nominal monthly GDP at annual rate. Debt in dollars; GDP in billions converted to dollars. Latest common month only; no forward filling. FRED quarterly ratio is a separate benchmark, not this production series. |
The numerator is federal interest payments less interest receipts. The denominator is federal tax receipts, explicitly chosen and named. In Q2 2026, net interest equals 31.6% of tax receipts and 19.9% of total current receipts; gross interest equals 33.6% of tax receipts.
78 of 266 quarterly observations sit above the latest net/tax reading. This describes the NIPA ratio, not the overall fiscal position. Interest-receipts coverage limits the net series to 1960 onward.
On this NIPA net-interest/tax-receipts basis, 37 quarters read above 40%, between 1984Q1 and 1995Q3. They were not consecutive: the span is 47 quarters in four separate runs, with ten quarters at or below 40% inside it. The dashed 40% line provides historical context; it is not a fiscal-crisis or fiscal-dominance threshold.
NIPA and fiscal-year budget accounts differ in coverage, timing and treatment of receipts. A matched reconciliation would be needed to explain any particular difference; this page has not completed one.
The gap between marginal and average rates indicates potential refinancing pressure. The maturity and reset profile determines timing. Rates relative to nominal growth are only part of debt arithmetic; the primary balance also matters.
The exhibit covers gross outstanding, unmatured marketable Treasury securities, including securities held by the Federal Reserve. It excludes intragovernmental and other nonmarketable debt.
For each monthly observation, principal amounts with contractual maturity dates within the following 12 months are summed. The percent divides that amount by total outstanding, unmatured principal in the same security universe. Dollar amounts are displayed in trillions of nominal U.S. dollars.
Reopenings are consolidated by security identifier (CUSIP), summing all reported non-null outstanding amounts. Treasury bills are measured at maturity value; TIPS use inflation-adjusted principal. FRN coupon resets and TIPS inflation indexation are not treated as refinancing events. Already-matured securities are excluded from the plotted measures. No replacement issuance or interest-cost forecast is modeled.
June 2012 is excluded because Treasury’s published bill subtotal does not reconcile with its security-level records. Both plotted series retain a gap for that month; no value is interpolated.
Regime-Era labels provide historical context, not causal attribution. The exhibit measures refinancing concentration and scale. Its fiscal implications depend on funding costs, revenues, growth, and additional borrowing.
CDS is U.S. five-year USD credit-event protection pricing, not a physical default probability. Cheapest-to-deliver mechanics, liquidity and contract terms can affect premiums. A higher premium is not a direct default-probability estimate.
High-yield OAS measures corporate spreads over a Treasury curve after option adjustment, and is converted from percent to basis points exactly once. The two measures are not interchangeable: because each line uses its own axis, their heights and crossings are not direct comparisons of credit risk.
Completed-month closing observations only. The series are held on a continuous monthly calendar with missing months preserved as gaps; a missing quote is not evidence of an absence of risk. U.S. CDS observations begin in November 2008.
The 2023 episode was a debt-ceiling standoff, not a budget shutdown. Regime-Era labels provide historical context, not causal attribution.
Data notices
This product uses the FRED® API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
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