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.

NEW YORK/LONDON, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Dovish signals from the European Central Bank’s meeting next week would encourage investors to begin pricing in unprecedented monetary easing and prompt a sharp fall in short-term euro zone interest rates.

Money market rates now anticipate a 25 basis point cut in the key ECB lending rate to 1 percent on Thursday, but investors have hesitated to price in more cuts next year.

For that, they need ECB President Mario Draghi to signal that the bank is willing to cut rates to all-time lows to aid the European economy and keep inflation within the target.

In the United States, the Fed has kept short-term rates near zero for three years and has said it would maintain them there at least through mid-2013.

Money market strains, reflecting increased wariness among lenders, demonstrated the need for a more accommodative ECB.

That stress eased on Wednesday and Thursday after the Federal Reserve and other major central banks moved to let foreign banks borrow dollars at a lower interest rate.

But on Friday, strains increased again. The three-month euro/dollar cross currency basis swap — which narrowed sharply after the coordinated central bank action — widened.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fifteen renovated galleries offer fresh perspective on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of more than 12,000 Islamic works of art spanning 13 centuries and an area ranging from Spain to India.

About 1,200 pieces of art will be on view at any one time with displays of textiles and works on paper changing frequently due to the sensitivity of these materials to light.

A re-thinking of the Islamic art collection, developed alongside the museum’s years-long renovation project, led to the new galleries being named to reflect the range of nations and empires that produced the art.

While the collection was once succinctly termed Islamic Art, the museum now describes the works inhabiting the galleries as “Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia.”

The new emphasis on geography grew out of the view that while religion unifies the collection, region diversifies it.

“Islam is not a single lens through which we view and interpret the art,” said Navina Najat Haidar, curator and coordinator in the Met Museum’s department of Islamic art. “Rather, it’s an inverted lens that reveals great diversity.”

This multi-faceted approach stresses the immense variety of artistic expression.