At a time when politicians are squeezing budgets to cut borrowing, the bond market is clamoring for more debt, pushing yields on almost $20 trillion of government securities to less than 1 percent.
The average yield to maturity for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Broad Market Sovereign Plus Index fell to a record-low 1.34 percent last week from 3.28 percent five years ago. Even though the amount of bonds in the index has more than doubled to $23 trillion -- bigger than the gross domestic product of the U.S. and China combined -- countries from Germany to Rwanda sold debt in the past month at their lowest yields.
