NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries prices slipped on Friday as a more upbeat view of the economy and reports Greece was near a deal with its private-sector creditors removed some of the impetus for buying safe-haven U.S. government debt.

Greece and its private-sector creditors are converging toward a debt swap deal that would cause a loss of 65 to 70 percent for private bondholders, a banking official close to the talks told Reuters on Friday.

News that U.S. sales of existing homes in December were slightly lower than forecast had no impact, but recent upbeat data on the economy have been negative for Treasuries.

“The back-up in the U.S. Treasury yields seems due to a combination of developments beginning with yesterday’s jobless claims figures (which showed a sharp drop in the newly jobless) and reports that the Greek negotiations with private sector investors may yield results after all,” said Kevin Flanagan, chief fixed-income strategist and managing director at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

Benchmark 10-year notes fell 8/32, their yields rising to 2.01 percent from 1.97 percent late on Thursday. Those losses were in line with slippage in German bunds, another safe-haven asset. Bund futures slipped 83 ticks to 138.12.

Thirty-year bonds fell 25/32, their yields rising to 3.08 percent from 3.03 percent late on Thursday.

A banking official close to the Greek debt talks told Reuters the new bond Greece would issue to its private-sector creditors would likely have a 30-year maturity, a grace period of 10 years, and a stepped-up coupon structure that would average about 4 percent.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries prices slipped on Wednesday as the prospect of the IMF raising more funds to ease the euro zone debt crisis and higher-than-forecast earnings from Goldman Sachs boosted riskier assets like stocks and depressed demand for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) fourth-quarter profit fell 56 percent but the investment firm beat Wall Street expectations by cutting costs and taxes, pushing its shares 6 percent higher. U.S. banks focused on business and consumer lending did better in the fourth quarter, reporting increased demand for loans from businesses.

The International Monetary Fund estimates it needs to raise $600 billion in new resources to lend to countries to help them with the repercussions of the euro zone debt crisis, IMF sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

The IMF reports weighed slightly on Treasuries prices, said David Ader, head government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut.

Meanwhile, stocks and bond yields moved in lock-step, with yields rising along with stocks.

“The contour of the last five or 20 days on a minute-to-minute basis is that you see Treasury yields go down when stocks go down and go up when stock prices go up,” said Robert Tipp, chief investment strategist for Prudential Fixed Income with $240 billion in assets under management.

But other factors are at work, he said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries prices were mostly flat on Tuesday, with 30-year bonds up slightly, as planned Federal Reserve purchases of Treasuries balanced out the negative influence of higher stock prices.

The Fed is expected to buy Treasuries with maturities ranging from February 2036 to November 2041 in an operation it rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon after technical difficulties interfered with an operation that had been planned for mid-morning.

“We have nothing but a string of buybacks until next week, which may be the biggest driver,” said David Ader, head government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut.

Thirty-year bonds rose 1/32 in price, putting their yields at 2.90 percent. Benchmark 10-year Treasury bonds yielded 1.86 percent, little changed on the day.

The New York Fed’s open market desk is expected to conduct a total of four purchase operations and one sale this week; two of those operations are scheduled for Wednesday.

“The desk will sell as much as $8.75 billion in the 1.5- to two-year sector and purchase as much as $15.5 billion in longer-dated Treasuries,” said Thomas Simons, vice president and money market economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York.

The prospect of the Fed purchases helped Treasuries reverse some early losses incurred as global stock market gains and the view that China could move to stimulate economic growth curbed investors’ appetite for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

NEW YORK, Jan 17 (Reuters) – An exhibit of American Indian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art throws the connection between art and collector into unusually sharp relief.

The show features key pieces from The Coe Collection of American Indian Art, the life’s work of a Ralph T. Coe, a collector and museum director who played a central role in reviving interest in American Indian art.

“The exhibit honors Coe and the role he played in the acceptance and understanding of the Native American work,” said Julie Jones, head of the museum’s Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

The show includes about 40 objects representing a wide range of materials, from stone to animal hide, as well as time, place and distinct peoples.

Most of the Coe collection dates from the 19th to early 20th century when Native Americans came in contact with outsiders ranging from traders to missionaries to the U.S. army.

“Coe had some particular interests, one of them being objects that have come to be called souvenir art,” Jones explained.

Souvenir art melded Native American art with European art, such as mocassins embroidered with European-like floral designs. Work from the people of the Great Plains evokes the men on horseback wearing feathers and buckskin.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries rallied

on Friday as warnings that Standard & Poor’s would downgrade euro-zone sovereign debt ratings fed a bid for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said the ratings agency had alerted most euro-zone countries of downgrades and France would have its top AAA rating cut by one notch.

“S&P is known for doing Friday downgrades and markets are fearful of that,” said Rob Robis, head of fixed-income macro strategies at ING Investment Management in Atlanta, Georgia.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose half a point, their yields easing to 1.87 percent from 1.92 percent on Thursday. Thirty-year bonds rose more than a point, their yields falling to 2.91 percent from 2.97 percent on Thursday.

Ironically, the S&P ratings downgrades would occur after Italy and Spain drew solid demand at debt auctions on Thursday, easing fears of a regional credit freeze.

“But ratings positions lag the news so the debt downgrade would be in response to the problems we saw in peripheral Europe at the end of last year,” Robis said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury debt prices slipped slightly on Thursday after investors showed scant interest in buying 30-year bonds at the Treasury’s final coupon auction of the week.

The Treasury sold $13 billion in reopened 30-year bonds at a high yield of 2.985 percent, awarding 69.8 percent of the bids at the high.

The 30-year Treasury bond, up 10/32 in price before the auction, fell afterward. In late trade, however, it was barely changed on the day, yielding 2.97 percent.

“It was a sloppy auction, especially considering that reopenings typically go much better than the new issues,” said Thomas Simons, money market economist at Jefferies & Co. “This was the widest stop since December 2009,” he said, referring to the difference between the auction high yield and the yield at the 1 p.m. (1800 GMT) deadline for bids.

The ratio of bids received over those accepted was just 2.6, below the average of 2.81 in the four most recent auctions and below an average of 2.68 in 2010, CRT Capital Group Treasury strategist Ian Lyngen said.

Dealers got the biggest share of the bonds since the 30-year bond sale in August 2011 as the direct bid, which had supported strong auctions in recent months, evaporated to a 7.2 percent “takedown,” the smallest portion since March, Simons said.

“Whether we are talking about investors or business owners (in the real economy), there is a complete lack of willingness to make a long commitment,” said James Sarni, managing principal at Los Angeles-based Payden & Rygel.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Treasuries stood fast in the plus column on Wednesday as worries about Europe’s economy and debt crisis fed a bid for safe-haven government debt.

That demand allowed the Treasury to auction $21 billion in re-opened 10-year notes at a record low yield of 1.90 percent, beating the previous low yield of 2 percent in September.

“The Treasury market strength can be attributed to risk-averse sentiment on European concerns and talks of the collapse of the euro,” said Justin Lederer, Treasury strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York. “There is clearly demand for 10s and for Treasuries in general.”

In afternoon trade, the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was up half a point, yielding 1.91 percent.

The euro fell 0.8 percent to $1.2672, closing in on a 16-month low of $1.2666 set on Monday, after Fitch’s head of sovereign ratings said the European Central Bank needs to ramp up its buying of euro zone debt to support Italy and prevent a “cataclysmic” collapse of the currency.

In addition, investors are on edge ahead of sovereign debt auctions by Italy and Spain over the next two days, while senior euro zone bankers said talks about private sector participation in a Greek bailout are going badly.

The Federal Reserve’s purchase of $2.25 billion in bonds due in 2036 to 2041 also supported Treasuries.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York exhibit sheds new light on the life of Emma Lazarus, whose sonnet on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty transformed the monument into a symbol of hope for millions of immigrants.

“Emma Lazarus Poet of Exiles” at The Museum of Jewish Heritage, which runs through December, marks the 125th anniversary of the dedication of the statue.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” wrote Lazarus, whose passion had been stirred by the plight of Russian Jews fleeing pogroms in the 1880s, which inflamed anti-Semitism and xenophobia at home and abroad.

“Many people know Emma Lazarus for those lines, but we wanted visitors to understand all the influences that fed her thinking so that she could craft that message about exile, home and the promise of America as no one else could,” said Melissa Martens, curator and director of the exhibit.

Among the exhibit’s treasures is the manuscript notebook containing Lazarus’ famous sonnet, “The New Colossus,” and other works she re-penned in 1886 when ill with cancer.

The original letter from Lazarus’s great-great uncle, Moses Mendes Seixas, to George Washington in which Seixas describes a government “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance” is also featured.

Washington echoed that vision in his reply which forms a foundation for religious freedom in America, and is rarely seen by the public in original form.

By Ellen Freilich

(Reuters) – Euro-zone bank failures could lead to a credit squeeze in the United States, hurting an already subpar U.S. economic recovery, warned the well-known Wall Street economist Henry Kaufman.

A deterioration in the European financial system “could cause some of the American financial institutions to become more conservative and limit their own balance sheet expansion, a credit squeeze that would place a limit on the American economy,” Kaufman said in an interview with Reuters.

“A failure in the euro-zone area, a malfunctioning of the euro, would have negative repercussions for the U.S. not just in terms of a slowdown in U.S. exports to Europe, but also because of linkage between American financial institutions and European institutions,” said Kaufman, who is president of the economic and financial consulting firm bearing his name.

Kaufman earned the sobriquet Dr. Doom in the 1970s – long before Nouriel Roubini acquired the title in recent years. Like Roubini, Kaufman was prescient in his warnings about excessive debt in the financial system.

These days, with markets focused on Europe’s excessive debt, he says severe spending cuts in southern Europe could send those countries into a downward spiral with no prospect of recovery.

“Debtor countries need to expand their economies and austerity measures diminish those countries’ ability to grow and service their debt,” Kaufman said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. government debt prices fell on Tuesday as traders cut prices before this week’s auctions of 10- and 30-year Treasuries.

The Treasury will sell $21 billion in 10-year notes at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), the second leg of a three-part refunding. It will sell 30-year bonds on Wednesday.

“The Treasury market is, unsurprisingly, bear steepening into today’s 10-year and tomorrow’s 30-year (Treasury auction) supply,” said RBS Treasury strategist John Briggs, noting the rise in yields for longer-dated maturities.

Thirty-year bonds fell 13/32, their yields rising to 3.08 percent from 3.06 percent on Monday. Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes fell 7/32, pushing their yields up to 2.04 percent from 2.02 percent on Monday.

“Even when risk-off sentiment surges, we continue to observe a buyers strike when 10-year yields creep below 2 percent,” Briggs said.

The 10-year auction re-opens the 2 percent 11/15/21 and will raise the issue size to $45 billion, said Justin Lederer, Treasury strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York.

“We expect market participants to continue to build in a small concession into 1 p.m. (auction bidding) deadline, albeit with a great deal of caution given … the reality is that it only takes one story out of Europe to trigger a forceful bid in the safe-haven U.S. Treasury market,” he said in a note.