Global bond selloff drives up borrowing costs, little relief in sight

AI’s debt demand now competes with governments in bond markets

The Wall Street Journal reported in its Aug. 19 edition of The 10-Point that the global bond selloff was raising financial pressure on multiple borrowers at once. “A global bond selloff is raising borrowing costs for governments, businesses and families, with little relief in sight,” the newsletter states.

“The continuing U.S.-Iran war and inflation are part of the story,” the WSJ reports. The newspaper also put a new and consequential label on the selling: artificial intelligence. “The industry’s enormous appetite for debt puts it in competition with traditional nation-state borrowers,” the WSJ writes.

The WSJ adds that some investors are bracing for “a new era in bonds” — and see “echoes of 2007.”

The same edition of the newsletter presses the point in a different domain. “Big Tech is confronting a growing backlash that threatens the foundations of the AI boom,” the WSJ states, saying its reporters had taken readers “inside the frantic race to quell it.”

The 10-Point is the WSJ’s newsletter rounding up its strongest coverage; the August 19 edition was edited by Morgan Smith and Bryony Watson in collaboration with Editor in Chief Emma Tucker. The edition also carried a set of unrelated pieces.

In a separate piece in the edition, the WSJ reported that one in five U.S. households now includes a GLP-1 user, a doubling since early 2025 according to PwC. JPMorgan projects the weight-loss drug market will drain the food and beverage industry of $30 billion to $55 billion a year as soon as 2030.

The same editorial round-up also describes a humanitarian standoff at the Spanish territory of Ceuta on the North African coast: “More than 72,000 migrants poured into this tiny Spanish territory” three weeks ago, overwhelming authorities and causing many residents to close up their shops and stay inside. Most passed through; thousands remained, “refusing to leave,” and, as the WSJ reports, are creating “a humanitarian crisis—and a growing headache for local residents.”

Elsewhere in the edition: an account of the Lodge family, which has “kept a tight grip on the handle of its cast-iron business since 1896” and gathers some 70 family members in Tennessee every year; a look at the market for ragged graphic t-shirts at New York ThriftCon described as a “big business”; and another feature.