If a tree fell in a forest and nobody heard it, did it really make a sound?
The Treasury Department on Feb. 15 issued the annual Financial Report of the U.S. Government.
At the time of this writing—more than 24 hours since the report was released—it looks like there hasn’t been any media coverage. Nothing. Zip. Scratch.
Friday’s issue of the Wall Street Journal did not say a word about our public purse, or what happened to it last year.
In the “What’s News” section on the front page, we learn about compelling things like “Billionaire investor Thiel is relocating to Los Angeles,” “Nestle’s sales growth last year was the slowest in decades,” and “U.S. motor vehicle deaths remained near decade-high levels in 2017.”
But we don’t learn anything about the financial condition of the federal government, from neither the Wall Street Journal nor the New York Times.
The largest financial institution in world history issued its annual report yesterday, and nobody cares.
Maybe we need to rethink the assumption that Treasury securities provide a good proxy for “risk-free” interest rates.