TREMBLING TREASURIES RICK TOBIN
hat is the bond market? Why have interest rates increased so much between 2012 and 2013
on a percentage basis? How does it affect real estate? Why should I care about it?
What is the Bond Market?
As defined by recent Wikipedia updates, the Bond Market is described as follows:
“The bond market (also known as the credit, or fixed income market) is a financial market where
participants can issue new debt, known as the primary market, or buy and sell debt securities, known as
the Secondary market, usually in the form of bonds. The primary goal of the bond market is to provide a
mechanism for long term funding of public and private expenditures.
As of 2009, the size of the worldwide bond market (total debt outstanding) is an estimated $82.2 trillion, of
which the size of the outstanding U.S. bond market debt was $31.2 trillion, according to Bank for
International Settlements (BIS – The World’s “Superbank”).