Here's TIME Magazine, February 16, 1959:
Business: Bond Failure
The U.S. Treasury offered $9.1 billion in new securities last week to private holders of maturing debt and got a shock. It had hoped to persuade most of the holders of maturing issues, bearing 1⅞% and 2½% interest rates, to trade them in for new Government securities paying 3¾% and 4%. Instead, owners of more than 20% of the old issues demanded to be paid off in cash, the biggest such demand in six months.We're racking up $12 Billion every three days.
To help make up the difference, the Treasury must go to the public this week with a $1.5 billion emergency issue.
The failure of the latest debt "rollover" attempt was a fresh sign of softness in the Government bond market—and of the size of Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson's task of refinancing $42 billion of Government securities falling due this year. At a time when most investors want to buy stocks, real estate or other things as a hedge against inflation, Anderson is finding the public increasingly uninterested in bonds.
Furthermore, Wall Streeters thought he had made a mistake in trying to sell securities with one year as the shortest maturity. At a time when investors were trying to figure how high interest rates might go, too many of them did not want to tie up their cash for a year.
Anderson's troubles began last spring when it became clear that the Treasury would have to raise up to $12 billion to cover the Government's deficit for this fiscal year....MORE
