Bond questions from someone outside the economics field
I work outside the field of economics, but I find macro economics to be both important and interesting. However it is also quite a tough subject. I hope this is the right forum to ask:
Reading Jack Schwager's Schwager on futures: Fundamental Analysis there is a chapter about interest rates. There's a graph overlaying the 30 year T-bond yield and the yield curve and the author says there is a general tendency for interest rates (the 30 year T-bond) to decline during periods in which the yield curve steepens (steepens meaning an accommodative policy that lowers short term interest rates).
How does that work? Doesn't this basically run contrary to the following snippet from Investopedia, which says that expectations of future inflation cause long term interest rates to increase rather than decrease?
"If the bond market believes that the FOMC has set the fed funds rate too low, expectations of future inflation increase, which causes long-term interest rates to increase in order to compensate for the loss of purchasing power associated with the future cash flows of a bond or the principal and interest payments on a loan. On the other hand, if the market believes that the FOMC has set the fed funds rate too high, the opposite happens - long-term interest rates decrease because the market believes future levels of inflation will decrease."