Nice article...

...in The Economist regarding the similarity between Treasuries and cash (a pity the article does not go a bit deeper into the discussion and mention QE as being, fundamentally, a simple asset swap between interest and non-interest bearing assets, nor does it seem to grasp that the world's desire to net save "safe" assets far exceeds the supply of said assets at this moment in History).

Still, its nice to see the ball rolling a bit further than usual at The Economist, which has been woefully simplistic in recent years.

Full article here.

That, the authors say, is evidence of the higher value investors place on holding something that is 100% safe (a Treasury bond) rather than almost 100% safe (the AAA-rated corporate bond). At the same time the spread between AAA-rated and lower-rated corporate bonds also widens, a sign that the supply of Treasuries has a broader effect on the price of safer assets. Lower amounts of Treasury debt also lead to a wider spread between Treasury-bill yields and the interest paid on federally insured bank certificates of deposit. Since both are guaranteed by the government, the authors attribute the lower relative yields on T-bills to increased demand for their superior liquidity.