Nellie Liang is a senior fellow in the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy in the Economic Studies program at Brookings. From July 2021 to January 2025, she served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance, the office that oversees Treasury debt issuance. This post is drawn, in part, from her April 8, 2025, testimony at a House Financial Services Committee hearing, which you can read in full here.
Why is the market for US Treasury debt so important?
There is no larger thoroughfare for global capital than the market for U.S. Treasury debt securities. It averages around $900 billion in transactions per day, with high volume days in recent years around $1.5 trillion. In addition, there is roughly $4 trillion in Treasury repurchase agreement—or repo—financing each day. And average daily trading volume in U.S. Treasury futures was $645 billion in notional in 2023 and higher in 2024.
The Treasury…
