Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been projecting gambling house bravado about the U.S. economy even as signs mount that the rest of the world is quietly hedging its bets against America, according to a new analysis.
Testifying before Congress this week, Bessent insisted the financial system remains credible, pointing to successful bond auctions and the dollar's continued dominance in global transactions, despite global concerns about President Donald Trump's economy, reported the New York Times.
"The U.S. is in fact the leader, and the leader does not fear competition," Bessent told lawmakers. "Competition makes us better."
The Treasury secretary dared investors to bet against the U.S. economy in a recent appearance at Southern Methodist University using a casino metaphor. "It's my dream," he said. "I have asymmetric information. I am the house now."
According to the Times, those boasts are undercut by the 10-year Treasury yield, which climbed above 5 percent this week, its highest level since 2007, as investors demanded higher returns amid unease over the nation's roughly $40 trillion debt load — even after the Treasury Department quietly bought back $5.2 billion of its own longer-dated debt days earlier in an apparent bid to push yields down.
Foreign institutions are acting on similar unease.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, announced this month it plans to trim its Treasury holdings for stronger returns elsewhere. The dollar's share of global central bank reserves, meanwhile, has slid to 56 percent as of the end of 2025, down from 64 percent a decade earlier.
Global reserves held in gold surpassed official holdings of U.S. Treasuries last year, and the metal's price topped $5,000 per troy ounce for the first time, reflecting that growing unease.
Some allies have gone further by physically moving gold out of the U.S., as the Netherlands' central bank said this month it relocated a large share of its holdings from American vaults, citing "increasing geopolitical unrest," months after France pulled 129 tons from the New York Fed.
Eswar Prasad, the IMF's former China division chief, said the trend reflects deliberate strategy rather than panic. "Geopolitical factors and U.S. weaponization of the dollar through financial sanctions are causing central banks and other official investors to attempt to diversify away from dollar assets."
New payment systems are also emerging as alternatives. China has been developing a cross-border digital currency platform with Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while Russia and India said last week they're pursuing a digital-currency arrangement of their own to settle trade outside Western institutions.
Josh Lipsky, chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council, said the shift is not exactly new, but it was accelerating. "The story of moving away from the dollar is one of the oldest stories that exists. Countries have thought about working around the dollar, and technology is making it a little cheaper and easier to do it than before."
