2 Year Bond Auction Sees Lowest Foreign Interest Since February 2008

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/19/2011 - 13:17 Bond Foreign Interest Repo Market Tim Geithner

Following last week's stellar auctions, this week's issuance trio has started off with a whimper. While Tim Geithner managed to sell $35 billion in 2 year notes today at a near record low rate of 0.24%, the details were very unimpressive. Because not only did the Bid To Cover decline from last month's record 4.07 to a modest 3.45, in line with the last 12 auction average, it was the precipitous drop in Indirect Bidding, aka foreign interest, that was most notable: at just 21.65% this was the lowest Indirect Take Down since February of 2008. Which means Dealers had to take on a majority of the auction. Which they did at 63.66% of the total. Naturally, this will not be a surprise to many: after all according to the latest TIC data, Chinese bond holdings tumbled in October to the lowest in a year, Russian holdings collapsed, and courtesy of the Fed's weekly custodial account updates, we know that foreigners have been selling tens of billions in US paper in the past several weeks. Slowly, the US is becoming the same ponzi scheme that it accuses Europe of being whereby Dealers buy up paper, and immediately repo it back to the Fed and other conduits. In other words, once the European repo market freeze crosses the Atlantic, then it will get very interesting very fast.