US Treasury Buybacks ·Latest operation Aug 25, 2026
Treasury has swapped $99.2B of long-term bonds into short-term bills (debt due within a year) since May 2024.
Every buyback operation since 2000: what dealers offered, what Treasury bought, and the price it paid, bond by bond.
What a buyback is, and why the market argues about it
In a buyback, Treasury purchases its own outstanding bonds from dealers at market prices and retires them. The cash comes from ordinary borrowing, which since 2024 has leaned heavily on short-term bills.
Retiring long bonds while issuing bills shortens the duration the market must absorb. Whether that amounts to a stealth Operation Twist is the live debate; this page shows both sides of the swap so the size of the effect can be read, not guessed.
The buyback side is measured from every operation's results; the bills side from the Monthly Statement of the Public Debt. Both come from Treasury's own Fiscal Data feed.
Latest operation · Aug 25, 2026
2.1x
dealers offered $8.4B against a $4.0B cap (5Y to 7Y)
Bills share of marketable debt · Jul 2026
22.2%
above the 15-20% band Treasury's own advisory committee recommends
Long bonds bought back since May 2024
$99.2B
bonds due in 10+ years, 52 operations
Deepest discount paid
50.4¢
per dollar of face value, for the 1.375% bond of Aug 2050
The story, in plain English
6 steps; the charts below prove each one- 1. In 2020 and 2021 the US government borrowed at the lowest rates in its history, selling 30-year bonds that pay their holders less than 2% a year.
- 2. Then rates rose. A new 30-year bond now pays about 5%, so nobody will pay full price for an old one stuck at 2%. Those old bonds trade at 50 to 75 cents per dollar of face value.
- 3. Since 2024, Treasury has run a standing window where dealers can sell those old bonds back to it at today's discounted prices. Officially this is maintenance: it keeps the market for old bonds functioning. (Chart: cents on the dollar.)
- 4. Dealers line up to sell far more than the window is allowed to take, roughly 10 times more this year. That pressure is why the window doubles in size on September 9, 2026. (Chart: the exit queue.)
- 5. Treasury pays with freshly borrowed money, nearly all of it short-term bills, meaning IOUs due within a year. So payments that were due in the 2040s and 2050s get erased, and in exchange the government pays bill interest that starts now, resets every few months, and has no end date. (Charts: the debt calendar and the bills share.)
- 6. Is that a win? It is a trade, not a profit. The discount is the market's fair price for a low 2% payout, today's interest bill actually rises a little on each swap, and the government gives up rates it had locked in until the 2050s. What it gets is smaller face-value debt and a healthier market for its old bonds. The full argument, with every number: why Treasury doubled its long-term bond buybacks.
The debt calendar, rewritten
every payment erased, and what replaced itStart here. Every gold bar is money the government no longer has to pay out, placed in the year it was due; the tall towers are bonds' face value coming due in the 2040s. The red band below the line is what it pays instead: interest on the new bills, starting immediately, with no end date.
Built from the actual coupon schedule and maturity of every long bond Treasury has bought back: the payments that no longer exist, by the year they were due, against the bill interest now being paid on the cash that bought them. Hover a bar for that year's erased payments.
The duration swap
long bonds retired vs net new billsThe buyback program looks big until you put it next to the borrowing that pays for it. The gold line is every long bond bought back; the grey line is the new short-term bills sold over the same months. The gap between them is why economists call this a debt swap, not debt reduction.
● Long bonds bought back, cumulative (left) · ● Net new bills issued, cumulative (right)
Watch the scales: the two lines are drawn on different axes, and the bills axis on the right runs about 12 times the buyback axis on the left. Next to total new bill issuance the buyback program is small, and that gap is the point. Cumulative since May 2024, monthly through Jul 2026 (the debt statement publishes about a month behind the operations). Long bonds are the regular (non-inflation-protected) bonds due in 10 years or more; bills are the change in Treasury bills outstanding.
The exit queue
how much dealers offered vs what Treasury could buyEvery week or two, Treasury opens a 20-minute window and dealers offer bonds back. This chart shows how crowded that window is. A dot at 10x means dealers offered 10 dollars of bonds for every 1 dollar Treasury was allowed to buy. The crowd at the gold dots, the longest bonds, is what forced the window to double on September 9, 2026.
● Long end (10Y+) ·● Belly (3Y to 10Y) ·● Front end (under 3Y) ·● TIPS
Each dot is one operation: the face value dealers offered, divided by the most Treasury was allowed to buy (the announced cap). Above the 1x line, dealers offered Treasury more bonds than it was allowed to buy. Hover a dot for the operation's numbers.
Cents on the dollar
the price paid for every bond bought backWhy would anyone sell a $100 bond for $52? Because a bond that pays 2% a year is worth about half price in a world where new bonds pay 5%. Each dot below is one bond Treasury bought and what it actually paid. This is the market repricing the cheap debt of 2020, not a fire sale.
Each dot is one of the 329 securities bought back since the modern program began: maturity year across, average price paid per $100 of face value up, dot size by the amount retired. The cluster of 2040s-2050s bonds far below the 100 line is Treasury retiring low-coupon debt at half its face value.
The bills share
how much of the debt rolls over at short-term ratesWhere the money comes from. The buybacks (and most new borrowing) are funded with bills, IOUs due within a year that must be re-borrowed over and over at whatever rates are then. The line shows how much of the national debt now lives on that treadmill, against the 15-20% share Treasury's own advisory committee calls prudent.
Treasury bills as a share of all marketable debt, monthly since 2001. The shaded band is the 15-20% share the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) has recommended. Hover the line for any month's reading.
Two eras of buybacks
face value retired per year, 2000 to todayThe program ran once before. In 2000-2002 the government had surplus cash and paid a premium, about $1.29 per dollar of face value, to retire bonds costing it 9-14% a year. Today it pays about 72 cents at the long end, with borrowed money, to retire bonds costing 2-3%. Same tool, opposite world.
The 2000-2002 program retired debt because the government ran surpluses and had spare cash. The 2024- program runs alongside roughly $2 trillion deficits, which is why it is read as a duration operation rather than debt reduction. The near-empty middle is 21 years with only small-value test operations.
Latest Treasury buyback results
most recent operations first| Operation | Bucket | Offered | Cap | Bought | Offered ÷ cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 25, 2026 | 5Y to 7Y | $8.4B | $4.0B | $1.2B | 2.1x |
| Aug 20, 2026 | 3Y to 5Y | $10.2B | $4.0B | $1.9B | 2.5x |
| Aug 18, 2026 | 20Y to 30Y | $19.9B | $2.0B | $2.0B | 9.9x |
| Aug 11, 2026 | 10Y to 20Y | $7.4B | $2.0B | $2.0B | 3.7x |
| Aug 6, 2026 | 1Mo to 2Y | $35.8B | $4.0B | $4.0B | 8.9x |
| Jul 28, 2026 | 20Y to 30Y | $21.9B | $2.0B | $2.0B | 11.0x |
| Jul 23, 2026 | 10Y to 20Y | $16.3B | $2.0B | $2.0B | 8.2x |
| Jul 22, 2026 | TIPS 1Y to 10Y | $3.2B | $750M | $405M | 4.3x |
| Jul 16, 2026 | 20Y to 30Y | $30.5B | $2.0B | $2.0B | 15.3x |
| Jul 9, 2026 | 2Y to 3Y | $12.5B | $4.0B | $2.3B | 3.1x |
| Jul 1, 2026 | 10Y to 20Y | $15.7B | $2.0B | $2.0B | 7.9x |
| Jun 25, 2026 | 20Y to 30Y | $21.3B | $2.0B | $2.0B | 10.7x |
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Common questions
- What is a Treasury buyback?
- A buyback is an operation in which the U.S. Treasury purchases its own outstanding securities from dealers before they mature, paying the market price. Treasury announces a maximum purchase amount and a list of eligible securities, dealers offer bonds back, and Treasury accepts the offers it judges attractively priced. The modern program, running since May 2024, supports market liquidity and cash management, and this page tracks every operation's results.
- Is the Treasury buyback program quantitative easing?
- Not mechanically. In QE the Federal Reserve creates bank reserves to buy bonds and expands its own balance sheet. In a buyback the Treasury retires bonds and funds the purchase from its cash balance and ordinary borrowing, so total debt does not fall and no reserves are created. The live debate is about the effect rather than the mechanism: retiring long-maturity bonds while borrowing mostly in bills shortens the duration the market must absorb, which resembles the Fed's 2011 Operation Twist. This page charts both sides of that swap so the size of the effect can be read directly.
More questions
- Where does the money for Treasury buybacks come from?
- From Treasury's operating cash, replenished by its regular securities issuance. Buybacks have no dedicated funding source. Because bills have supplied most net new borrowing since 2024, bonds retired in buybacks are in effect refinanced at short-term rates. The bills-share chart on this page tracks that issuance mix against the 15-20% share of marketable debt the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee has recommended.
- Why would Treasury pay 50 cents on the dollar for a bond?
- Because that is the market price. A 30-year bond issued in 2020 with a coupon near 1.4% is worth far less than face value when newly issued long bonds yield much more; the discount reflects interest rates, not credit distress. Treasury retires the full face amount regardless of the price paid, so deeply discounted bonds retire more face value per dollar spent. The price scatter on this page shows what Treasury paid for every bond it bought back.
- How often does the Treasury hold buyback operations?
- The schedule is published in advance at each quarterly refunding, typically one or two operations per week, each covering one maturity bucket, with results released the same day. This page updates from the Treasury's official Fiscal Data feed after each operation.
The other side of the ledger
Buybacks retire debt; auctions issue it. Demand at the long-end auctions is the pressure gauge behind this whole program: US Treasury auction results tracks the bid-to-cover ratio, high yield, and indirect-bidder share of every 10-year and 30-year auction.
Data source
Figures are the official buyback operation results and Monthly Statement of the Public Debt published by the U.S. Department of the Treasury via Fiscal Data (fiscaldata.treasury.gov), covering every buyback operation since March 2000 (face value offered, accepted, and the announced cap), the price paid per security, and marketable debt outstanding by class since 2001.