Commentary On Sept. 22, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested during the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) press conference that the FOMC board was very close to tapering its purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. Initially, bond prices rallied on the news, then were slammed lower over the following two days as investors changed their view on how a balance sheet taper might affect bond prices. Investors now fear that without the Fed’s intervention in the bond market, that Treasury yields can and only must go higher. The conviction among investors that rates must go higher is the strongest it has been in the past 40 years. It’s now a foregone conclusion that after a 40-year secular decline in Treasury yields, we are on the cusp of a 40-year secular rise in interest rates. Much of this view has to do with a large amount of government debt and the …