1.原文连结：
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-15/treasury-paying-120-billion-of
-bills-due-doubted-as-fitch-warns.html
2.内容：
Treasury Paying $120 Billion in Bills Doubted as Fitch Warns
Investors holding $120 billion of Treasury bills coming due tomorrow are
increasingly worried that they won’t get paid.
Rates on the bills, maturing the same day that Treasury Secretary Jacob J.
Lew has said the U.S. will exhaust its borrowing capacity, have surged 16
basis points, or 0.16 percentage point, to 0.36 percent this week, according
to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. The securities, issued a year earlier,
traded at a rate of negative 0.01 percent as recently as Sept. 26.
“That is how fear manifests itself,” said Marc Fovinci, head of fixed
income at Ferguson Wellman Capital Management Inc. in Portland, Oregon, who
helps invest $3.5 billion and holds about $500,000 of Oct. 31 bills in one
account. “The market is discounting a day, or several days delay in payments.
”
Lew told Congress last week the extraordinary measures being used to avoid
breaching the debt ceiling “will be exhausted no later than Oct. 17” and
the department will have about $30 billion to pay obligations if Congress
fails to reach an agreement to lift the cap. Fitch Ratings placed the U.S.’s
AAA credit rating on a negative watch yesterday, citing the government’s
failure to raise its borrowing limit as the deadline approaches.
‘Last Gallon’
The Treasury should have enough money to pay off the Oct. 17 bills, according
to Ira Jersey, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Credit Suisse Group
AG, one of the 21 primary dealer obligated to bid at Treasury auctions. The
U.S. raised $13 billion in “new cash” through yesterday’s sale of $65
billion in three- and six-month bills, which should leave the government with
about $40 billion once the Oct. 17 bills mature, he said.
“After that the government is running on its last gallon of financial gas,”
Jersey wrote in an e-mail. “After Oct. 24, the government will be running
on fumes.”
The next securities maturing after the Oct. 17 debt are $93 billion of bills
due Oct. 24. Rates on those bills have risen 20 basis points to 0.47 percent
this week and touched 0.53 percent, the highest since they were sold in
April. The rate was negative as recently as Sept. 27.
‘Close Enough’
“We are close enough to the deadline that, even if the latest headlines
suggest the talks are progressing, there will be those risk-averse investors
who decide they don’t want to hold those bills,” said John Davies, a U.S.
interest-rate strategist at Standard Chartered Plc in London. “For many
Treasury bill holders, a delayed payment can cause major problems and that
means you have to shift your positioning, which creates selling pressure.”
The Treasury is scheduled to sell $68 billion in bills today, including $20
billion of four-week securities, $22 billion in one-year debt and $26 billion
in 189-day cash management bills.
The sizes of the four-week and 27-week bills indicates the Treasury has “
slightly more room left under the debt limit” than previously estimated,
according to Wrightson ICAP LLC, an economic advisory company specializing in
government finance.
“There is very little chance that the Treasury will have any trouble rolling
over the Oct. 24 bills even if - as seems quite possible