German Government Bonds are “Riskless”

So Says German Debt Management Government Agency

by Dirk Ehnts, Econoblog101

Finanzagentur GmbH, you might have guessed it, is the German finance agency, which is conducting the operations necessary to ensure that the German government does not run out of money. It is part of the German treasury. As investors have found out the soft way, euro zone bonds are not always risk free. Greece restructured its debt, but only when most of its debt was offloaded by the private sector to the public sector and its institutions. Since I am looking into the mechanics of German government debt emission, I was a little bit surprised to find Finanzagentur writing the following:

Investors in German Government securities have at their disposal a range of risk-free, highly liquid securities with a straightforward and transparent structure across the full yield curve. The safe haven status of the Bund is especially attractive to investors in times of crisis.

This is the first sentence in the first paragraph on the website after you have clicked on institutional investors. So, whatever the German government says about Draghi, the Finanzagentur has accepted that ‘whatever it takes’ means literally risk-free.