You may actually know more than the authors or maybe not.
Do they, and you, think the Fed loans out taxpayer funds or not?
"No one has lost money from buying/investing in treasuries to date if held until maturity".
If you bought 30 year bonds in 1970 yielding 4% and held them until maturity you lost (a lot) to the high inflation of the late 70s. Even if the Treasury did not default on your bond.
Of course not. The original funds along with interest rate at time of purchase would be returned to them as promised at maturity. Who is being "silly" now?
You.
You seem to recognize default risk while ignoring every other risk of holding a bond.
Bear Stearns funded their bond book by borrowing overnight while buying longer term mortgage debt (among other things). Suddenly they were unable to borrow overnight money and their long bonds dropped in value.
Does that sound like a risk free trade?
Give me a break will ya, I've been trading since before the first trade center bombing...