Yanis Varoufakis says the US bond market is messy but not in crisis, while the petrodollar is slowly fading — bad news for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's credibility, neutral-to-good for the dollar's long-term reserve status.

• Bessent's plan to push bond yields down by having the Treasury buy long-term bonds can't work, because a government running huge deficits can't fix its debt problem by borrowing more to buy its own debt; only the Fed could do that.
• The bond market is not in crisis: yields, inflation and Fed rates look much like 2001, and the US can't go bankrupt since it prints the currency the whole world borrows in.
• The real risk is an inflation spike driven by higher oil prices from the Iran war, which raising interest rates won't fix and would only destroy businesses and output.
• The petrodollar is dying because of electrification — countries like Pakistan and Ethiopia are going solar with Chinese panels and batteries — and will be gone within 10–15 years.
• The dollar's reserve status survives anyway because exporters like Germany, Japan, Korea and China must park their dollars in US Treasuries, real estate and stocks, and stablecoins like Tether recycle even more money into US debt.
• China is the dollar's biggest supporter, since it holds trillions in dollar savings; its parallel payment system (mBridge) is a backup it will only use if the US tries to squeeze it with sanctions.

Outlook: The Trump–Xi meeting this week is a game of chicken — US tariffs vs. Chinese rare earths — and the best outcome for markets is both sides putting their sticks down and cutting a deal, while ending the Iran and Ukraine wars remains the only real way to bring inflation down.