The spread between 10-year and two-year U.S. Treasury bond yields reached a positive value of 0.1 percent in November 2024. The 10-year minus two-year Treasury bond spread is generally considered to be an advance warning of severe weakness in the stock market. Negative spreads occurred prior to the recession of the early 1990s, the tech-bubble crash in 2000-2001, and the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

The yield on Japan 10Y Bond Yield eased to 1.46% on June 6, 2025, marking a 0 percentage point decrease from the previous session. Over the past month, the yield has edged up by 0.16 points and is 0.49 points higher than a year ago, according to over-the-counter interbank yield quotes for this government bond maturity. Japan 10 Year Government Bond Yield - values, historical data, forecasts and news - updated on June of 2025.

As of December 30, 2024, 14 economies reported a negative value for their ten year minus two year government bond yield spread: Ukraine with a negative spread of 1,370 percent; Turkey, with a negative spread of 1332 percent; Nigeria with -350 percent; and Russia with -273 percent. At this time, almost all long-term debt for major economies was generating positive yields, with only the most stable European countries seeing smaller values. Why is an inverted yield curve important? Often called an inverted yield curve or negative yield curve, a situation where short term debt has a higher yield than long term debt is considered a main indicator of an impending recession. Essentially, this situation reflects an underlying belief among a majority of investors that short term interest rates are about to fall, with the lowering of interest rates being the orthodox fiscal response to a recession. Therefore, investors purchase safe government debt at today's higher interest rate, driving down the yield on long term debt. In the United States, an inverted yield curve for an extended period preceded (almost) all recent recessions. The exception to this is the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic – however, the U.S. ten minus two year spread still came very close to negative territory in mid-2019. Bond yields and the coronavirus pandemic The onset of the coronavirus saw stock markets around the world crash in March 2020. This had an effect on bond markets, with the yield of both long term government debt and short term government debt falling dramatically at this time – reaching negative territory in many countries. With stock values collapsing, many investors placed their money in government debt – which guarantees both a regular interest payment and stable underlying value - in contrast to falling share prices. This led to many investors paying an amount for bonds on the market that was higher than the overall return for the duration of the bond (which is what is signified by a negative yield). However, the calculus is that the small loss taken on stable bonds is less that the losses likely to occur on the market. Moreover, if conditions continue to deteriorate, the bonds may be sold on at an even higher price, partly offsetting the losses from the negative yield.

The Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was created by the U.S. congress in 1938, in order to maintain liquidity and stability in the domestic mortgage market. The company is a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), meaning that while it was a publicly traded company for most of its history, it was still supported by the federal government. While there is no legally binding guarantee of shares in GSEs or their securities, it is generally acknowledged that the U.S. government is highly unlikely to let these enterprises fail. Due to these implicit guarantees, GSEs are able to access financing at a reduced cost of interest. Fannie Mae's main activity is the purchasing of mortgage loans from their originators (banks, mortgage brokers etc.) and packaging them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in order to ease the access of U.S. homebuyers to housing credit. The early 2000s U.S. mortgage finance boom During the early 2000s, Fannie Mae was swept up in the U.S. housing boom which eventually led to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The association's stated goal of increasing access of lower income families to housing finance coalesced with the interests of private mortgage lenders and Wall Street investment banks, who had become heavily reliant on the housing market to drive profits. Private lenders had begun to offer riskier mortgage loans in the early 2000s due to low interest rates in the wake of the "Dot Com" crash and their need to maintain profits through increasing the volume of loans on their books. The securitized products created by these private lenders did not maintain the standards which had traditionally been upheld by GSEs. Due to their market share being eaten into by private firms, however, the GSEs involved in the mortgage markets began to also lower their standards, resulting in a 'race to the bottom'. The fall of Fannie Mae The lowering of lending standards was a key factor in creating the housing bubble, as mortgages were now being offered to borrowers with little or no ability to repay the loans. Combined with fraudulent practices from credit ratings agencies, who rated the junk securities created from these mortgage loans as being of the highest standard, this led directly to the financial panic that erupted on Wall Street beginning in 2007. As the U.S. economy slowed down in 2006, mortgage delinquency rates began to spike. Fannie Mae's losses in the mortgage security market in 2006 and 2007, along with the losses of the related GSE 'Freddie Mac', had caused its share value to plummet, stoking fears that it may collapse. On September 7th 2008, Fannie Mae was taken into government conservatorship along with Freddie Mac, with their stocks being delisted from stock exchanges in 2010. This act was seen as an unprecedented direct intervention into the economy by the U.S. government, and a symbol of how far the U.S. housing market had fallen.

Decentralized Finance users reached a peak of **** million unique users in 2024, whereas figures in 2025 are considerably lower. This according to a network crawling code that tries to measure the number of unique user addresses involved in buying or selling specific projects associated with DeFi. For example, the code lists data fetching commands associated with Uniswap and Aave — two DeFi protocols with a market cap that was higher than one billion U.S. dollars in March 2022. As Decentralized Finance — much like cryptocurrencies or NFTs — are not being tracked by an official government, these procedures try to measure "network activity". Such activity on the Ethereum blockchain/network, the most used blockchain for DeFi, or elsewhere — tend to be the only source of information on the market size of these topics. However, the source does acknowledge the numbers shown are not without their potential flaws. DeFi in 2025 is relatively small-scale Often remarked as a potential breakthrough trend for 2024, the TVL (total value locked) of DeFi in 2025 reveals a market that is much smaller than in 2021. The amount of money stored in Decentralized Finance was worth about ** billion U.S. dollars by May 2025, compared to *** billion U.S. dollars at the end of 2021. Two reasons can be named for this decline. First, the overall cryptocurrency markets had witnessed several dramatic moments. Prices declined after the crash of stablecoin LUNA, and the sudden collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2022. In 2023, the United States government handed out one of its largest ever corporates fines to Binance — the world's largest crypto exchange. Second, analysts believe the high yield on U.S. Treasury bonds in 2025 when compared to DeFi yields negatively impacted the young industry — as these bonds pose lower risk than DeFi. DeFi use cases: Supporting crypto investments Decentralized Finance hopes to offer different digital financial services, which are run by a community in a so-called decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) away from banks or governments. These services can include asset management, money lending, or trading, potentially making it possible to offer services that traditional finance cannot do. By May 2025, however, DeFi focused on two main use cases: Liquid staking and money lending. These processes are there to support crypto investors, specifically. The market size of insurance within Decentralized Finance, for example, was much smaller in comparison.