4-week T-bills still yielding 0.00%

For the third consecutive week the yield on 4-week T-bills in the weekly Treasury auction has come in at 0.000%. Nothing. People are actually bidding in the auction to give their money to the U.S. Treasury for four weeks for free. That is essentially the same as putting money in a zero-percent certificate of indebtedness. People bid to let Treasury hold their money for 13 weeks for a mere 0.041% annualized rate, or for 26 weeks for 0.289% annualized rate.

These insanely low rates are evidence of the large sums of money that are still sloshing around in the financial system despite all of the paper losses of the past year.

Note that if you just want the government to hold your money, use a zero-percent certificate of indebtedness and keep unlimited amounts of cash at the U.S. Treasury. Of course, you can also keep unlimited amounts of cash in many checking accounts and still get full FDIC protection and maybe even get more interest than a 13-week T-bill these days.

-- Jack Krupansky