Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s plans to intervene in bond markets have drawn widespread criticism, including from a prominent former mentor. Wall Street is buzzing about an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal by Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire investor. Druckenmiller criticized Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bond buyback plan, calling it a mistake — and, worse, suggesting it’s a stab at manipulating the bond market. Remember that Druckenmiller more recently employed Kevin Warsh, now the Fed chairman, who has argued that the government should intervene less in markets, not more.

Bessent’s dilemma was on display on Monday. He held a news conference in Washington, threatening Tehran and its allies with bruising new sanctions. But details of “Operation Economic Fury,” as the administration is calling it, were sparse. Bessent dialed down the hard-line tone he used on Sunday, in which he threatened an “economic D-Day” on Iran and countries that do business with it. Instead, he suggested on Monday that “quiet diplomacy” would be the best way to persuade countries to cut trade ties with Tehran. What about China, Iran’s biggest trading partner? Bessent said that “no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions."

Analysts say that Beijing’s cooperation is key to putting pressure on Tehran. How the markets have reacted to Bessent’s news conference: Speaking of that intervention: Bessent continues to face criticism over his decision to increase buybacks of longer-dated Treasury notes and bonds until the day after Election Day. That announcement hasn’t ended volatility in bond yields. And in the long term, it risks undermining the goal of Kevin Warsh, the Fed chairman, to rely more on “market signals” to determine interest rate policy. The biggest rebuke to Bessent came from Druckenmiller, who worked with him at George Soros’s fund management firm in the 1990s.