The gap between the three-month and 10-year yields vanished as a surge of buying pushed the latter to a 14-month low of 2.416 percent. Inversion is considered a reliable harbinger of recession in the U.S., within roughly the next 18 months.

Demand for government bonds gained momentum Wednesday, when U.S. central bank policy makers lowered both their growth projections and their interest-rate outlook. The majority of officials now envisage no hikes this year, down from a median call of two at their December meeting. Traders took that dovish shift as their cue to dig into positions for a Fed easing cycle, pricing in a cut by the end of 2020 and a one-in-two chance of a reduction as soon as this year.

"It looks like the global slowdown worries have been confirmed and the market is beginning to price in Fed easing, potential recession down the road," said Kathy Jones, chief fixed-income strategist at Charles Schwab & Co.

In the end, the Kushner family seems to have gotten what it wanted. Last year, Brookfield Asset Management, which has substantial investment from the government of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, came to the Kushners' rescue. (The Qataris have denied any advance knowledge of the deal.)

"You'll notice that the U.S. position toward Qatar changes when the Qataris bail out 666 Fifth Avenue," said Ward, adding, "We look like a banana republic." Maybe that's why Jared and Ivanka appear so blithely confident. As public servants, they're obviously way out of their depth. But as self-dealing scions of a gaudy autocracy? They're naturals.

...

C.L.O.s are nothing more than a package of risky corporate loans made to companies with less than stellar credit. The big Wall Street banks make these loans to their corporate clients and then seek to move them off their balance sheets as quickly as possible, in the same way that a decade ago they packaged up and offloaded risky mortgage securities. Just as with mortgage-backed securities, to move the loans out the door the banks have been counting on the nearly insatiable demand for higher yields ... This is not a tiny slice of the market. Of the trillions of dollars of corporate loans outstanding in the United States, roughly $1.2 trillion of them are considered "leveraged loans," or loans to companies considered bigger credit risks.

In a speech before the Economic Club of New York in November, Mr. Powell said he thought that investors in C.L.O.s would bear the brunt of an uptick in corporate bankruptcies, rather than the big Wall Street banks. Those investors include Japanese banks as well as investors in hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds (in other words, you and me).

Janet Yellen, Mr. Powell's predecessor, aired the same concern in December, in a conversation with the Times columnist Paul Krugman. Ms. Yellen said she worried that corporate indebtedness was "quite high": it's now more than $9 trillion, up from $4.9 trillion, in 2006, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. "I think a lot of the underwriting of that debt is weak," she said. "I think investors hold it in packages like the subprime packages," which became so popular before the 2008 crisis. "The same thing has happened. It's called C.L.O.s, or collateralized loan obligations."

...

After a brief moment of sanity in December, the loopy demand for high-risk debt has once again heated up. More than $13 billion of leveraged loans were sold in February, and they will soon worm their way into the financial markets as C.L.O.s. The existential question remains: Why do investors fail to learn the harsh lessons about risk, even though the consequences of them still remain so fresh?

At times, that relentless march of circumstance can produce results that look insane or visionary, depending on the month. Conceived in the wake of the 2008 recession and executed during the boom that followed, the megadevelopment opens onto a troubling future. The market for ultradeluxe condos is sagging, and we'll see whether that's one of the shocks that Hudson Yards is built to withstand. A dozen years ago, it seemed obvious that retail would prop up a shaky market for office space. Now the opposite is true. The 720,000-square-foot mall comes online even as storefronts are shuttering all over New York and Amazon threatens the whole concept of entering a shop with money and walking out with a shopping bag. On the other hand, businesses that were once squeamish about relocating to an uncertain frontier zone are now gobbling up square footage. Companies like Coach, L'Oréal, Warner Media, Wells Fargo, and Boston Consulting Group will cohabit with creations of the millennial boom like Stonepeak, and the demand for office space seems likely to outpace the current glut.

...

The New York Times explains why the tax makes sense in these cases and how the city is hurt right now without it. "The $238 million record purchase was a visceral reminder that when wealthy buyers like Mr. Griffin purchase expensive apartments as second homes or investments, New York City and the state get less financial benefits than if the home was owned as a primary residence. If the buyers live out of state, they are not subject to state or city income taxes, and do not pay New York sales tax while outside the state."

The collapse of nuclear talks between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un also contributed to the sour mood among investors, especially in South Korea.

...

That ends the Trump administration's attempt to unravel a tie-up the U.S. said would lead to higher prices for pay-TV subscribers around the country -- though it could make the DOJ hungrier for a win on the next big merger up for review, T-Mobile US Inc.'s pending $26 billion takeover of Sprint Corp., according to one analyst.

"The government's objections that the district court misunderstood and misapplied economic principles and clearly erred in rejecting the quantitative model are unpersuasive," the court said in a 35-page ruling