In times of uncertainty and recession, as investors lose confidence, they tend to shift from shares, whose prices fluctuate with business fortunes, to government debt that can be sold at a steady price or can be used as collateral for borrowing on good terms. At the top of the pyramid of safe assets are dollar-denominated U.S. Treasuries.2 Their status as the ultimate safe asset is not due to the strength of the dollar, which has progressively depreciated for half a century. Nor does it stem from the fact that U.S. fiscal policy has the highest reputation for probity. U.S. Treasuries are the
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