The bonds can be sold to a worldwide market by insurance companies that incur major risks by writing policies. If the insurance companies can get a good enough price for such bonds, they can eliminate their exposure to the risk of a major disaster, thereby allowing them to issue policies to homeowners at a lower cost.

One example is Eurobonds, which Merkel has declared taboo. Yet they are the obvious solution to the root cause of the euro crisis, which is that joining the euro exposed member countries government bonds to the risk of default.

Now, the CDS market offers a convenient way of shorting bonds, but the risk reward asymmetry works in the opposite way. Shorting bonds by purchasing a CDS contract carries limited risk but almost unlimited profit potential, whereas selling a CDS contract offers limited profits but practically unlimited risks.

When yields on risky bonds decline toward those on safe assets, it is fair to conclude, he argues, that someone is taking on excessive risk. The problem, then, is how to determine exactly when risk premiums are too low.

Sierra Leone would issue iron ore bonds and Mongolia would issue copper bonds. Investors would be able to buy Guatemala s coffee bonds, Côte d Ivoire s cocoa bonds, Liberia s rubber bonds, Mali s cotton bonds, and Ghana s gold bonds.

Jamaica, for example, would issue aluminum bonds Nigeria would issue oil bonds Sierra Leone would issue iron ore bonds and Mongolia would issue copper bonds. Investors would be able to buy Guatemala s coffee bonds, Côte d Ivoire s cocoa bonds, Liberia s rubber bonds, Mali s cotton bonds, and Ghana s gold bonds.

Moreover, in a risk off environment, when investors are risk averse or when equities and other risky assets are subject to market and or credit uncertainty, it may be better to hold negative yielding bonds than riskier and more volatile assets.

When financial markets discovered that supposedly riskless government bonds might be forced into default, they raised risk premiums dramatically. This rendered potentially insolvent commercial banks, whose balance sheets were loaded with such bonds, giving rise to Europe s twin sovereign debt and banking crisis.

We can also add to these financial risks the massive problems of bond insurers that guaranteed many of the risky securitization products such as CDOs. A very likely downgrade of these insurers credit ratings will force banks and financial institutions that hold these risky assets to write them down, adding another 150 billion to the financial system s mounting losses.

Moreover, the new federal bonds very long maturities meant that there was no rollover risk. It would have been very dangerous to expose the federal government to this danger, given that the operation was rightly perceived at the outset as extremely risky.

The advantage of a par bond is that Greece s creditors banks, insurance companies, and pension funds would be able and allowed to continue valuing their Greek bonds at 100 cents on the euro, thereby avoiding massive losses on their balance sheets. That, in turn, would sharply contain the risk of financial contagion.

Investors are buying long term bonds at the current low interest rates because the interest rate on short term investments is now close to zero. In other words, buyers are getting an additional 2 current yield in exchange for assuming the risk of holding long term bonds.

First, sovereign bonds held by banks are treated as risk free assets under EU rules for calculating banks solvency and capital adequacy levels. This is a risky assumption, because it implies that no European government will ever fail to repay the bond in full, with all interest due, and on time.

As Edgar L. Smith wrote in The Atlantic Monthly back in 1924, when the principal risks are macroeconomic, bonds are no safer than diversified portfolios of stocks in fact, they are riskier.

Banks loaded up on the relatively high yield debt of countries like Greece because they had to set aside very little capital. But, while the debt was highly rated, how could anyone objectively assess unsecured and virtually unenforceable obligations?

Local bond markets provide alternative sources of financing for companies and Governments, which avoid exchange rate risks inherent to foreign financing.

45. The rescue is notable in that there was no attempt to restructure the debt profile, probably because debt was largely in the form of bonds that had been widely dispersed among portfolio investors. It would have been extremely difficult to locate the creditors and to organize a mechanism through which restructuring could be negotiated, and the free rider problems would have been uncontrollable.

3. If you still find yourself there, stop the desire to deleverage by having the Treasury guarantee risky assets, or issue safe ones, in order to raise the quality of debt in the market this, too, will make holding debt more attractive.

If you still find yourself there, stop the desire to deleverage by having the Treasury guarantee risky assets, or issue safe ones, in order to raise the quality of debt in the market this, too, will make holding debt more attractive.

As a result, mortgage brokers maximize their income by generating larger volumes of mortgages, as do the banks that package these loans into mortgage backed securities (MBS s). Investment banks then earn fees for re packaging these securities in tranches of collateralized debt obligations, or CDO s (and sometimes into CDO s of CDO s).

The stock market s recent performance often is attributed to the unconventional monetary policies that many central banks have been pursuing. These policies, by design, lowered the return on sovereign bonds, forcing investors to seek yield in markets for higher risk assets like equities, lower rated bonds, and foreign securities.

41. In measuring an environmental liability based on the present value approach, the discount rate used to measure present value would be a risk free rate, such as that used for a government security that has a similar term.

(c) An allocation to emerging market debt may be an optimal method of achieving exposure to the potentially high risk high return profile of developing countries

Bond holders are to receive 456 million in bonds due in 2011 (with the same coupon of 9.5 per cent) and 574 million in bonds due in 2018 (with the same coupon of 9.04 per cent).

Bond

It may therefore be tempting to invest in inflation indexed bonds, which adjust both principal and interest payments to offset the effects of changes in price growth. But the protection against inflation does not prevent a loss of value if real interest rates rise, depressing the value of the bonds.

However, the ability to tap into domestic savings and issue bonds in national currency reduces exposure to abrupt changes in foreign investors' confidence.

The application of funds of an insurance company is limited to bank deposits, trading of government and financial bonds and other forms of fund application stipulated by the State Council.

Moreover, not forbidding indirect purchases should be seen primarily as a means of permitting banks that buy government bonds to pledge them as collateral for refinancing operations, while bearing the full investment risk. The distinction between bond purchases from the government and from the banks that bought them from the government is a phony one that gives rise to myriad possibilities for circumvention.

The authorities will issue 35.2 billion in new securities, comprising 15 billion in par bonds, 11.9 billion in discount bonds and 8.3 billion in quasi par bonds.

Any financially literate fund manager knows that risk and return are positively correlated. Any fund manager who claims to have been deluded by the apparently favorable risk yield characteristics of CMOs or related credit instruments can be accused of having fallen for Milton Friedman s free lunch.

Before the disaster, Japan issued about 1.5 billion in earthquake related catastrophe bonds as a risk management device the debt is canceled if a precisely defined seismic event occurs. This design helped spread the earthquake risk from Japan to foreign investors, who could accept the risk and were enticed by higher expected yields.

Any financially literate fund manager knows that risk and return are positively correlated. Any fund manager who claims to have been deluded by the apparently favorable risk yield characteristics of CMOs or related credit instruments can be accused of having fallen for Milton Friedman s free lunch.

Bonds? Real estate?

An investment grade rating reflects the credit rating agencies' belief that the probability of payment of the bond is high and the financial risk associated with the investment is low.

(b) An allocation to high yield bonds will provide further diversification benefits to the portfolio, more than compensating for the risk of this asset category

Interest rates will rise to compensate investors both for having to accept a larger share of government bonds in their portfolio and for an increasing risk that governments will be tempted to inflate away the value of their debts, or even default.

Such guarantees might take the form of financial security deposits, insurance or bonds.

And we came up with this idea of issuing bonds, press freedom bonds.

The Battle of the Bonds

Moreover, when providing their capital to a financial firm, bondholders can generally be expected to obtain contractual terms that reflect the risks they face. Indeed, the need to compensate bondholders for risks could provide market discipline when financial firms operate in ways that can be expected to produce increased risks down the road, they should expect to pay with, say, higher interest rates or tighter conditions.

Debt service coverage and bond interest

The Fund apos s bond portfolio was helped by its overweighting in United States and United Kingdom bonds and an underweight position in yen bonds.

Of the roughly 200 trillion in global financial assets today, almost three quarters are in some kind of debt instrument, including bank loans, corporate bonds, and government securities. The derivatives market certainly helps spread risk more widely than this superficial calculation implies, but the basic point stands.

By creating the European Central Bank, the member states exposed their own government bonds to the risk of default. Developed countries that issue bonds in their own currency never default, because they can always print money.