Free Debt for US Treasury Says Gross

Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund, said the Federal Reserve’s latest round of monetary stimulus will enable the Treasury department to issue debt for no cost.

The central bank said yesterday it will buy $45 billion a month of Treasury securities starting in January, expanding its asset-purchase program, and for the first time linked the outlook for its main interest rate to unemployment and inflation targets. The purchases will add to the $40 billion a month it is buying of mortgage debt.

“What really happens, and this is critically important, is that the Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them and then it remits interest to the Treasury,” Gross, who runs the $285 billion Total Return Fund, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television with Betty Liu. “It means the Treasury is issuing debt for free. There are complications. Inflation is one of the complications.”

Treasuries fell yesterday after the Fed announced bond- buying plans as traders bet the actions would eventually fuel inflation. Thirty-year Treasury yields reached a five-week high of 2.93 percent today while break-even rates on 30-year inflation-index bonds, a measure of expectations for consumer prices during the life of the securities, climbed to 2.55 percentage points yesterday, the most since Oct. 5.

Bloomberg

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