Business News

The government has just sold $15 billion of 31-year bonds. But what actually is a bond?

Written by Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Boxing Day sale.Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

There are the Boxing Day sales, and there was this week’s rush of extremely cashed-up investors desperate to get a slice of this week’s rare 31-year government bond auction.

What’s a bond? What’s a bond auction? We’ll get to those shortly.

First, just know that the government...

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