Global bonds buckle as surging oil prices inflame inflation risks

In the long human story of energy and money, oil has always carried a particular power to unsettle the careful arrangements of financial markets. Today, a sharp rise in oil prices is once again transmitting itself through the global economy as rising inflation expectations, pressing down on bond valuations from New York to Tokyo and forcing central banks into an uncomfortable reckoning with choices they had hoped to set aside. The ancient tension between the cost of energy and the value of money is reasserting itself, and the institutions charged with managing that tension find themselves with