
Having your cake and eating it too: The maturity structure of US debt (2012) - gwern
http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2012/11/debt-maturity.html
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mynameishere
_Why not go long?_

People forget that the market is bigger--many times bigger--than the Treasury
and the Fed put together. Why not go long? Because the market for 20+ year
debt at a laughable yield won't allow it. I suspect the economists at our
governing institutions know what they are doing: Rising rates will cause
havoc, and so they sell paper based on avoiding said havoc.

~~~
gwern
That would make sense, except reality disagrees: long-term debt is salable. US
30 year debt used to be perfectly liquid, and even more extremely,
perpetuities like the British consol have had no troubles being sold or
traded. The US government did not switch to short-maturity debt after careful
consideration and research proved longer maturities didn't work, it was much
more accidental than that...

