Agreed in general but I don’t think there is anything structurally preventing <0% yields on treasuries. The ECB has already set a central bank rate as low as -0

Agreed in general but I don’t think there is anything structurally preventing <0% yields on treasuries. The ECB has already set a central bank rate as low as -0.50% before. It would of course be deeply unintuive to a regular person and likely very unpopular if rates went negative enough to require it to be reflected in consumer banking (eg negative rates on a checking/savings account). But I don’t think it’s impossible and we may see it in our lifetimes. That is just a nitpick though because I think the US public as-is would throw a fit if it happened, making it unlikely. Fully agreed that purchasing a 10y bond at 1% was boneheaded given plenty of people predicted interest rates to need to increase to fight inflation (come on, just because the fed said it was transitory for a while, doesn’t give professionals an excuse to blindly take that at face value). The effective yields could have been so much higher just keeping the cash uninvested or in short term treasuries, then purchasing 10y bonds after the rate hikes started or stabilized. Yeah that is much more obvious in hindsight but it’s not like it was a fringe position even in 2021