Financial crises come and go — and then come right back again. But they never seem to entirely go away. That’s been the pattern of this Trump administration.

Staying calm and taking a long view is what you are supposed to do in investing. But with the on-again-off-again Trump tariffs disrupting world markets, big budget deficits looming and a fickle stock market, there’s been plenty to worry about. Add to all that soaring global bond yields and you’ve got a recipe for sleepless nights.

Climbing global bond yields are just beginning to attract widespread attention. Bonds have never been as sexy as stocks in the United States, but the bond market has always had the quiet capacity to dominate the economy and instill fear around the world, and its awesome powers are evident once again.

As James Carville, the Democratic political strategist, said in the 1990s during the Bill Clinton administration: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

For the record, I’d like to come back as the world’s No. 1 tennis player. But in other respects, I agree with Mr. Carville. Ructions in fixed-income markets are capable of transfixing wayward politicians in ways that sports legends never can.

What’s happened lately is that long bond yields — the interest rates that investors demand to buy bonds with a maturity of 20 years or more — jumped to their highest levels in decades, in both Tokyo and in New York. They’ve dropped a bit, but remain relatively high. Most headlines in the United States have focused on U.S. bond yields. Japan’s bond problems have received coverage, too, but largely because difficult government bond auctions in Tokyo set off increases in U.S. Treasury yields.