June 12, 2023

Current US Treasury Yields from Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bonds/us


Just to make sure this is clear, the yield quoted for paper of less than 12 months maturity is ANNUALIZED yield.

In other words, if you bought $1000 face value of the 3 month Bill, you would have to roll it 3 more times at the same yield in order to realize that 5.24% quoted at the link above. You aren't going to realize $52.40 in 3 months, rather you would gain one quarter of that, or about $13.10. $13.10 X 4 = $52.40 on one thousand dollars face value of this paper.

Here is a page from TreasuryDirect showing the auction results for 91 day T-Bills. Note the price. It says "98.698194". If this is purchased as a $1,000.00 face value bill, then it's easy to figure how much it costs by just moving the decimal over one place to the right. - $986.98. At the end of the 91 days the Treasury will redeem this bond for one thousand dollars, giving you a gain of $13.02. Again, as I said above, roll that 3 more times at the same price and you have a 5.208% yield. Of course the yield can and does change, so there is no guarantee that the next time you go to buy 90 day paper it would have the same yield. It could be less or it could be more.

It's important to remember that these prices are not engraved in stone, and the linked page is an auction result, not a sales contract or retail pricing sheet. Since this paper trades robustly on the secondary market, you can expect to pay either more or less on the day you buy, based on market trends that day.

As far as where these securities can be purchased, other than setting up an account with TreasuryDirect, any retail brokerage firm that has a bond desk (which is most of them) can sell you Treasury Bonds. They may have a purchase minimum however, of perhaps $5,000 or more.


Lastly, this current situation is a classic example of what is called an "inverted yield curve" meaning the shorter maturities have a higher yield than the longer ones.

May 8, 2023

I worked in a slaughterhouse when I was 15.(A bit of a graphic story, but relevant to recent events)

My dad worked for the government and he was stationed in Alice Springs, NT Aus in the early 70's.

I got a job at the town Abattoir the last summer we were there. One of the jobs they gave me was working the "Kill Box". Even though this was a small volume facility (50 head was a VERY busy day), I probably shot over 1000 head during my time there, as well as dispatching hogs and sheep.

We used a .22 Long Rifle cartridge. Put one round in the center of the curls of hair that are found on the forehead or behind the horns of every bovine on the planet and most of them will instantly drop like a sack of flour. The only time a single shot didn't do the trick was on the rare occasion we were sent a large, mature Bull. It was as if they had armor plating for skulls! Most of the cattle that came off the Stations in the Northern Territory back then were Shorthorn and Brahman.

The .22LR round would deform as it penetrated but it didn't have nearly the muzzle velocity of a .223 or similar round and as a result, would do relatively little damage. Enough to quickly and efficiently dispatch the animal.

I shot yearlings, steers, cows, calves, and pigs and never, NOT ONE SINGLE TIME, over the course of hundreds of kills, did a round exit the other side of the skull, or leave more than a pencil sized hole on entry, yet had no difficulty in dropping 1200 pound animals instantly. It also left the brain mostly intact.

On Saturday, DU'er pnwmom put up a thread in which she edited her OP to include a link to a post put up in her thread which contained a now deleted Twitter post which had video of a number of the victims, one clearly a child with brain matter on the ground next to him and a woman who appeared to have been shot in the face, as there was a hole where her right eye should have been large enough to put your fist into.

The arguments put forward by the staunch 2A types that defend the right to purchase a weapon specifically designed to kill human beings - that fires ammunition that can literally cause an organ like the liver or heart to disintegrate, serves absolutely ZERO purpose as a hunting or sporting weapon, are spurious at the minimum and absurd at the most.

Now I'm not a hunter. It just wasn't something that was the culture in my family. My dad was a Navy Medical Corpsman in WWII and a Marine Corps Field Medic in Korea. He was recruited by the CIA in the 50's because of his combat medical experience, was stationed all over the world during his time with The Company and as such, likely saw plenty of carnage and destruction of human bodies in his lifetime.

The only weapon he ever kept in the house was his Government issued Smith & Wesson .38 Service Revolver. I never saw him shoot it.

Not once.


After the situation in Ferguson, MO in 2014 brought us the picture below, I thought long and hard about buying a similar weapon to the one pictured, as I thought ...well, if the cops are going to be able to sit on top of armored cars with sniper rifles aimed at civilians, maybe I should be similarly armed.



After long contemplation, and even though I have no formal medical or EMT training, I bought one of these instead;




Fuck anyone who thinks weapons like the ones used at Sandy Hook, Uvalde, El Paso and Allen (and on and on and on) should be easier to buy than a 6-pack.

Just fuck them.

May 3, 2023

The article in post # 7 makes reference to two different interest rates...

(I'm not sure which Politico article you are referencing, as there are several about the Debt Ceiling issue on their website at the moment)

One is the Federal Funds Rate and the other is the interest rate paid to holders of US Treasury Bonds by the US Treasury on the various bonds it issues.

You said;

The rate set by the Federal Reserve is a rate of interest the Federal Reserve Bank charges it's member banks to borrow money from the Fed or from each other, usually for very short time periods, typically overnight. Most other commercial and retail borrowing rates are based on that rate, such as mortgages, car loans and credit card interest rates.

A paragraph near the end of the article said this;



This refers to purchasers of US Treasury Bonds which are auctioned by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on a regular basis and are robustly traded worldwide on the secondary market. If buyers of Treasury paper feel the level of risk has risen, they will bid DOWN the price of a given series of bonds, forcing their yield higher (Bond yields rise or fall to the inverse of a bonds price).

As a side note, we often hear of the "Risk Free Rate". That is referring to the yield and/or coupon rate of a ten year Treasury Note.

Why the 10 year? A bond trader explained it to me years ago like this;

Anyone, be they a government or a corporation or a municipality can offer for sale a 30 day bond or a 90 day or a 6 month or a year or two. It's not that big of a risk to a buyer of such debt because the maturity is short and the likelihood of default or failure is relatively small. And anyone can offer long term bonds, like a 20 or 30 or even a 50 year bond. They carry substantially more risk, but they are typically going to pay a much higher rate of interest.

But a ten year is sort of the Goldilocks of bonds. It is of significant length that it must be taken seriously by the issuer, and it will carry a coupon rate (The interest rate that is paid periodically to the holder every year until maturity) that is considerable and therefore attractive to potential buyers.

The United States Treasury has NEVER failed to make a coupon payment on time and in full nor has it ever failed to redeem any bond it has EVER issued for its full face value on the maturity date. It is one of the few 1st world nations able to make such a claim.

The ten year is favored because it meets the criteria of being a very safe and liquid place to store cash for a long period. The secondary market for US Debt Paper is deep, worldwide, well regulated and transactions, both buying and selling settle "Same Day" which means you will get your cash or your bonds settle on the day you buy or sell, instead of the "Trade Plus 3" which has been the standard for other securities for decades.

When I say the market is deep, what I mean is you can get a bid on virtually any amount of any series of Treasury Bonds within moments at any brokerage with a bond desk, anywhere in the world. Do you have $1.5 billion in 10 year notes at your bank in Singapore? No problem. Twenty billion in 30 years selling in London? Done. $750 million in 2 year paper in Berlin? Give me 2 minutes.

This also is an indication as to why any kind of default is such a scary proposition; because hundreds if not thousands of financial institutions, companies and the central banks of foreign countries the world over hold US Treasuries on their balance sheets. No one, and I mean NO ONE wants to see the US Congress do something so abjectly fucking stupid as to intentionally default. (On edit to add, no one with any brains, anyway. Empty Green and Boebert and the rest be damned)

It would be ruinous.