All over the news I read that the yield curve is inverting. I thought they were talking about the US Treasury Bond yield curve. This seems to be the case when I read this article.
However there are still some things I don't grasp.
1) How does the yield change?
For me the US are emitting the bonds. For instance they may decide to try selling bonds with a maturity of 30 year and a yield of 2%. If I buy it, then I can resell it on the secondary market. If I do that, I am still selling a bond with a yield of 2%, so how can the yield of 30 year bond become lower if the US does not decide to emit a bond with a lower yield?
2) Are we considering the yield curve of the US Treasury bond?
When I asked question 1) to my colleague today, he told me that in fact, the yield curve people were talking about was the one of the inter-bank rate (like the LIBOR). This added confusion for me. Is it true? Is it how the yield change?
From this answer, it seems like we are talking about Zero coupon yield curve constructed via the bootstapping method. Is it true?
3) Is there other also yield curves from other countries to consider?
What if the US Treasury bond yield curve invert but not the German bond curve? Is it possible?
4) Where can I find informations about the current yield curve?
Is there an official site posting this curve somewhere?
5) Why do people believe yield curve inversion implies an upcoming recession? Is it a fallacy or is it sure?
When reading the news I kind of have the feeling that people are saying "Last two time yield curve inverted we had a recession", but it sounds not very logical to me. From a statistical point of view the number of occurence is not enough to reach any conclusion. Is there more serious reasons to believe that a recession will come when the yield curve invert?