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Nobody wants U.S. Treasury bonds. Once a symbol of America’s economic might and accepted as a global coin of the realm, they have fallen badly out of favor, with serious consequences for taxpayers, investors, and financial markets. Elementary economic forces — too much supply and not enough demand — have collided to create the worst stretch for U.S. government bonds since the Civil War. The government keeps borrowing to cover its budget deficits, while once-reliable buyers of that debt, both at home and abroad, have pulled back. The result: Investors are demanding the steepest yields since 2007. Auctions of fresh...

The Dow fell more than 400 points Tuesday morning, turning negative for the year, as US Treasury yields surged to their highest levels in over a decade. The Dow fell 427 points, or 1.3%. The benchmark S&P 500 declined 1.5% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.8%, extending the late summer selloff in stocks. Stocks have marched higher for most of this year, as artificial intelligence excitement took hold on Wall Street and powered tech stocks to stratospheric heights. But that rally petered out in August, as strong economic data had investors worried that a resilient economy and piping hot labor...

5:32 AM PST - 1 Month US Treasury - 5.8% (annual rate). 1 Year US Treasury - 5.17% (annual rate).

There is a rumor swirling on Wall Street that China may be reversing its decades-old policy of buying U.S. Treasury Bills (T-Bills), which is giving bond-traders a case of nerves.  If China does not buy T-Bills, then the Federal Reserve will have to raise the yield on the bonds to make them more attractive to other buyers.  This rumor combined with the possibility that the Chinese economy will eclipse the U.S. economy in twenty years seemingly makes a thirty-year T- Bill less attractive than in the past. What a strange time in which we live, when cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum may be a...

In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled something new: a retirement savings account to "help" Americans build a nest egg, coining it the "MyRA." Something immediately felt wrong about the proposal... but I couldn't put my finger on it. So I researched the new MyRA and found details to help you understand just how it works. But I also saw some potential dangers there that you need to prepare for now... What MyRA Really Means Like most government programs, getting to their essence can take some sifting. So I've distilled here what I think are the...

(CNSNews.com) - Foreign ownership of U.S. government debt declined in July for the second straight month, according to Treasury Department data released Friday. Overall, foreign holdings of U.S. debt dropped from an all-time high of $4.5115 trillion in May to 4.4956 trillion in June and then to $4.478 trillion in July.In June and July, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders were negotiating legislation to increase the legal limit on the U.S. government’s debt. In August, Obama signed legislation that will permit the Treasury to borrow up to another $2.4 trillion.Among major foreign creditors of the U.S. government, entities in Russia led the...

President Barack Obama's best hope of re-election lies in provoking Republicans to force the United States into technical default, engineering a brief but severe financial crisis in order to appear as crisis-manager-in-chief. The Tea Party movement may be marching into a political ambush, in which Obama will be able to portray the born-again budget-cutters as irresponsible fanatics who threaten to tip America into a new depression. The now unpopular president then would assume the role of national savior in time of crisis. What would happen if August arrives without an increase in the US debt ceiling? There is no good...

The Market Has Exposed Its Bluff Against The Dollar And U.S. Sovereign Debt Vincent Fernando, CFA and Gregory White May. 4, 2010, 12:51 PM Despite all the beating America takes in the media for its currency and sovereign debt, investors are still fleeing out of most assets and into U.S. government bonds when markets get shaky. The 30 year treasury is rallying, sending its yield to a 2010 low at 4.46%. Moreover, U.S. inflation expectations appear relatively tame. The spread between the regular 30-year bond and the inflation protected 30-year bond is 2.64%. On a five year view, looking at...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A record drop in foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bills in December sent a reminder that the government might have to pay higher interest rates on its debt to continue to attract investors. China reduced its stake and lost the position it's held for more than a year as the largest foreign holder of Treasury debt. Japan retook the top spot as it boosted its Treasury holdings. The Treasury Department said foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bills fell by a record $53 billion in December. That topped the previous record drop of $44.5 billion in April 2009....

Harder to buy US Treasuries Created: 2009-12-18 0:13:35 Author:Zhou Xin and Jason Subler IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US's shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday. The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds. Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their...

From Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker: *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $27 BILLION IN 52-WEEK BILLS *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $42 BILLION IN TWO-YEAR NOTES *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $31 BILLION IN THREE-MONTH BILLS *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $28 BILLION IN SEVEN-YEAR NOTES *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $30 BILLION IN SIX-MONTH BILLS *U.S. TREASURY TO AUCTION $39 BILLION IN FIVE-YEAR NOTES

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York bought $2.599 billion in Treasurys on Wednesday. Dealers submitted $13.087 billion in debt maturing between 2021 and 2026 to the Fed. When the Fed last bought debt with those maturities, it purchased about $3 billion. The U.S. central bank has purchased more than $250 billion of the $300 billion in U.S. debt it promised in March to buy in an effort to keep borrowing costs, particularly for companies and homebuyers, affordable. Fed policy makers said last week they will slow down purchases to finish the buybacks in October, a month later than previously...

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday said it plans to purchase Treasury securities in three operations in the next two weeks, fulfilling policy makers' promise last week to slow down purchases of U.S. debt in the hopes that the program could help keep a lid on borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.

ROME — Two Japanese nationals were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian daily said Wednesday. The Japanese consulate general in Milan confirmed that the detention had taken place and said it was trying to confirm with Italian authorities whether the two were indeed Japanese nationals and their identities. According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, in a suitcase with a false bottom that...

Foreign central banks aren’t going to finance much of the 2009 US fiscal deficit; their reserves aren’t growing any more (the q4 2008 COFER data) Posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009By bsetserThe latest COFER data doesn’t show much change in the dollar’s share of global reserves: the dollar accounted for 64% of the reserves of countries that report data to the IMF at the end of 2008, exactly the same share as at the end of 2007. The dollar’s share of the reserves of advanced economies rose just bit, going from 66.9% at the end of 2007 to 68.1% at...

President Seeks to Reassures Jittery Markets, Investors After China Premier's RemarksInvestors should have "absolute confidence" in money placed with the United States, President Barack Obama said during an appearance with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the White House today. Obama and Lula da Silva held a private meeting for more than an hour before taking questions from reporters. Obama was asked about Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's expression of concern Friday that the Chinese investment of approximately $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills could be losing value. "I think that not just the Chinese government, but...

BEIJING (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants China to continue investing in the United States because the two countries' financial futures are closely tied together. "I certainly do think that the Chinese government and central bank are making a smart decision by continuing to invest in Treasury bonds," she said during an interview Sunday with the popular talk show "One on One.""It's a safe investment. The United States has a well-deserved financial reputation." To boost the economy, the U.S has to incur more debt, she said, shortly before departing for Washington. "It would not be in...

The interest rate on six-month U.S. Treasury bills dropped to its lowest level on record at the weekly Treasury auction, the government said Monday. The Treasury Department said it auctioned $27 billion in six-month bills at a yield of 0.25 percent, an all-time low. That's down from a rate of 0.285 percent last week. Treasury rates have fallen to historic lows as the worst financial crisis in 70 years has triggered a rush by investors to the safety of government securities. Higher demand for such securities pushes their yield, or interest rate, down. The lower rates make it cheaper for...

It's not funded by taxpayers The Skeptical Optimist [Now that Capitol Hill has agreed on a package, I hope we can all take a breath. My last article was titled "It's not a bailout; it's the dollar's credibility"; this is a follow-up.] Seems to me the main sticking point that almost prevented an agreement on the falsely-named "bailout" package was the false impression that we taxpayers will have to reach into our pockets and somehow come up with seven hundred billion dollars on short notice. And I think that false impression resulted largely from the answer Jim Bunning got when...

In a remarkable speech, yesterday, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Fed VIP William Dudley, the man overseeing markets for the Fed, identified five events during the recent sub-prime crisis that "that I never expected to see—ever." The events included what Dudley calls "nearly a failed Treasury bill auction—total bids were barely sufficient to cover the amount the Treasury was offering. This near-miss occurred despite the fact that money market mutual fund investors were fleeing to rather than away from Treasury securities."..