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Comment by outside1234 | Hacker News Reader

God, the fools they would need to find to buy these sort of instruments... There is no way whatever rate they peg these at are going to cover inflation over that time period...

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> the fools they would need to find to buy these sort of instruments

These fools run your pension fund.

Would a 100 year bond be a good match for an annuity? (I guess that's what you're making reference to). 30 year bonds match the expected life expectancy of someone buying an annuity, 100 year bonds not so much.

Longer time to maturity implicates larger interest rate risk. But with rates near zero there seems to be only one way to go. In higher interest rate environment Treasury might repurchase bonds with discount. So this is free money.

On the other hand if US goes Japanese for next decade or two it might be last chance for holding gov bonds without paying for the privilege ;-)

What pension fund?

The public employee ones your taxes backstop and guarantee 7% returns despite only getting 3-5%

My company offers a pension, and a 401(k). But then, I'm not in SV.

I have a pension fund?

More for me :)

All you have to do is tell people to put money into their 401k "FUTURE SECURE FUND (TM)###" and let the fund managers steer all the money to the 50 year bonds :)

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###Terms and conditions apply, see fund prospectus for details. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Complete loss of funds and/or negative returns may occur.

We just need to ease, quantitatively, to make the contracts come true in the numeric sense.

Because of course, prices are costs. ;- )

Haha yes exactly. We also need to do so before a recession, to prevent a recession.

Everybody loves big numbers. Especially presidents. They can put their faces on the new bills that will be required.

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