Rich Privorotsky, head of Goldman Sachs' One-Delta trading desk, warned that the decline in oil prices has failed to alleviate pressure on U.S. Treasuries, exposing a breakdown in the traditional link between energy and interest rates, and signaling deeper structural changes in the market. He believes the problem may have shifted from an energy shock to fiscal financing itself, with high real yields being the "clearing price" that fiscally dominant economies must pay to attract private capital and finance their massive sovereign debt. Privorotsky noted that when government bonds offer sufficiently high real returns, equities must provide even higher expected returns to attract private capital, which is systematically raising the hurdle for equity returns.