Balancing Treasury Market Stability and Systemic Risk

April 21, 2025 — In an interview last week Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has been vocal about his desire to lower the 10-year rate, mentioned what he sees as the Treasury’s toolkit for doing so. One of those measures was the lowering of the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR) for banks, which he described as something that will “allow banks to buy more Treasuries without a big capital charge . . . I expect we will have created a new buyer for Treasury securities.”