It should come as no surprise to anyone (outside of Washington) that the world did not, contra Geithner and Bernanke, come to an end today as the debt ceiling was reached. Treasury yields, meanwhile, are at a 5-month low.
Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it, whether the likes of Geithner and Bernanke have the ability recognize a systemic crisis or not. As usual, it seems they have identified the wrong systemic crisis. The crisis is the debt, not the debt ceiling. Similarly, in 2008 the crisis was not the failure of Lehman Brothers, but the bailout of everyone else.
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The U.S. Treasury has reached its $14.29-trillion debt ceiling, but it's a non-event in the bond market.
Yields on Treasury securities were flat to slightly lower Monday, continuing a decline that began in mid-April.
The 10-year T-note yield was at 3.16% at about 11 a.m. PDT, down from 3.17% on Friday. The two-year T-note was at 0.52%, down from 0.53%.
Wall Street has known for weeks that Monday would be the day, so the news is surprising no one. More important, there is no risk of default at the moment because the Treasury is taking stop-gap measures to conserve cash as it waits for Congress to make a decision about raising the ceiling.
The government will continue to issue new debt via bill, note and bond auctions. Some of the borrowing merely rolls over existing debt and so doesn’t add to the total outstanding.
On Monday the Treasury sold $27 billion of three-month bills at an annualized yield of just 0.03%. It also sold $24 billion of six-month bills at a yield of 0.07%. Obviously, given those barely detectable yields, Uncle Sam has no trouble borrowing.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The big spending bill passed into law with much fanfare last month will cut the deficit by $122 billion over the next decade - less than half of what top lawmakers promised at the time - the government reported Monday.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SPENDING_CUTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-05-16-17-39-56
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