One of the chief actions taken by the Federal Reserve in response to the financial crisis was the introduction or expansion of facilities designed to provide liquidity to the funding markets. A study of the programs suggests that the liquidity facilities generated $20 billion in interest and fee...

The Treasury Department makes available to the public considerable information about foreign holdings of its securities. Nevertheless, it is not possible to determine from the published data exactly which foreigners own U.S. Treasury debt and how much of this debt is in foreign hands.

Most discussions of treasury auction design focus on the choice between two methods for issuing securities--uniform-price or discriminatory auctions. Although auction theory and much recent research appear to favor the uniform-price method, most countries conduct their treasury auctions using...

Since the 1980s, economists have argued that the slope of the yield curve-the spread between long- and short-term interest rates-is a good predictor of future economic activity. While much of the existing research has documented how consistently movements in the curve have signaled past...

Treasury auctions are designed to minimize the cost of financing the national debt by promoting broad, competitive bidding and liquid secondary market trading. A review of the auction process-from the announcement of a new issue to the delivery of securities-reveals how these objectives have...

The U.S. Treasury Department now releases fuller information about its auctions than in the past, including new information on investor class and bidder category. The investor class data shed light on the distribution of demand for government securities, and the bidder category data, released...

The yield curve--specifically, the spread between the interest rates on the ten-year Treasury note and the three-month Treasury bill--is a valuable forecasting tool. It is simple to use and significantly outperforms other financial and macroeconomic indicators in predicting recessions two to six...