NEW YORK — Investors are so nervous, they’re willing to accept the same return from government debt that they’d get from stuffing the money in a mattress — zero.
The Treasury Department said Tuesday it had sold $30 billion in four-week bills at an interest rate of 0 percent, the first time that’s happened since the government began issuing the notes in 2001.
And when investors traded their T-bills with one another, the yield sometimes went negative.
“No one wants to run the risk of any accidents,” said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP, a research company that specializes in government finance.
At last week’s government auction of the four-week bills, the interest rate was a slightly higher but still paltry 0.04 percent. Three-month Treasury bills auctioned by the government Monday paid poorly, too — 0.005 percent. The Associated Press
