
Ask HN: Why isn't there a push for able Americans to buy bonds? - eatonphil
If federal, state, and municipal governments are concerned about wracking up too much debt while considering relief funds, why aren&#x27;t able Americans being pushed to buy bonds?
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wsh
I’m not sure I follow the question: when you buy a bond, you’re lending money
to the issuer, increasing its debt.

There’s no shortage of buyers for government securities, anyway. In
yesterday’s auction of 28-day U.S. Treasury bills [1], for example, the bid-
to-cover ratio was 2.75, meaning that the total of the bids was 2.75 times the
face amount of the securities actually sold, and the highest interest rate the
government had to agree to pay, to borrow as much as it wanted in that
auction, was only 0.091%.

[1]
[https://www.treasurydirect.gov/instit/annceresult/press/prea...](https://www.treasurydirect.gov/instit/annceresult/press/preanre/2020/R_20200521_1.pdf)

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ipnon
Let's say every American bought $100 of bonds today. That would be
$33,000,000,000 or 33 billion dollars of bonds. Next, take a look at the daily
volume of bonds traded on the financial markets. There is no need for another
drop in the bucket.

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rdtwo
They are, what do you think the FED is doing when they push interest rates to
the foor? They make investors chase risker and risker assets/bonds to get the
same interest rates. Rates on junk bonds have been pretty low and risk on
government bonds even lower. This bankrupts savers in the long term but nobody
cares about them.

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giantg2
Because while many people are stupid, they aren't that stupid.

You would have a better chance of making money following r/wallstreetbets,
because there's no way you can make any money on those bonds. (To be fair, you
could also loose everything in wallstreetbets)

