NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries US10YT=RR prices erased modest losses and turned flat on Tuesday as stocks trimmed some gains and investors maintained a steady appetite for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

While riskier assets like stocks and the euro improved, the lingering uncertainty surrounding the Greek debt situation appeared to assure demand for U.S. Treasuries.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note US10YR=RR, down 4/32 earlier, was unchanged on the day, yielding 1.95 pecent.

A “really pessimistic U.S. and global forecast” from the International Monetary Fund also seemed to argue the case for holding safe-haven assets, said Cary Leahey, managing director and senior economist at Decision Economics in New York.

The IMF said U.S. growth would be “modest relative to historical averages for years to come.” It cut its U.S. growth estimates to 1.5 percent for 2011 and 1.8 percent for 2012, from June forecasts of 2.5 percent for 2011 and 2.7 percent for 2012, respectively.

The IMF said U.S. household and business confidence had weakened notably and market volatility had spiked due to worries about the weak economic recovery, a U.S. credit downgrade and market turmoil in Europe. [nW1E7JU00F]

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve begins a two-day meeting on Tuesday that is expected to conclude with a decision to further ease monetary policy.

By Ellen Freilich

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – An exhibit of photographs from the 1930s and 1940s and the work of a contemporary artist and filmmaker both show the profound in the everyday lives of ordinary people.

“Signs of Life; Photographs of Peter Sekaer,” which began this month at the International Center for Photography (ICP) and runs through January 8, 2012, is the first major museum exhibit dedicated to Sekaer’s work.

The Danish documentary photographer, who died in 1950, contributed to U.S. government photographic projects during the Great Depression after immigrating to the United States and studying photography with Berenice Abbott.

“Sekaer’s photographs are among the finest produced in the Depression era in the United States,” said ICP associate curator Kristen Lubben.

Working with American photographer Walker Evans in the South under the auspices of the U.S. Farm Security Administration, Sekaer photographed everyday scenes from New York to New Orleans: a machine factory in Savannah, Georgia, Salvation Army Musicians in Cleveland, Ohio, a prison chain gang in Georgia.

By earning his living as a sign painter, he inhabited both the working and artistic classes.

NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries prices slipped on Tuesday as stock market gains and prospective progress in Greek debt talks damped demand for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

Major stock indexes .SPX.IXIC.DJI pushed into the plus column and bond traders booked a few profits after the previous day’s rally on the euro zone debt crisis and on expectations the Federal Reserve would buy bonds to lower longer-term rates.

Fear of a Greek debt default also receded.

Before a second conference call with Greece, the EU, IMF, and the ECB on Tuesday, Greek officials said Monday’s call with those agencies had been “productive and substantive” and they expected to get an 8 billion euro ($11 billion) aid tranche it needs to avoid running out of cash next month.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes US10YR=RR were down 4/32 in price, their yields rising to 1.96 pecent from 1.95 percent late on Monday.

Government data showed U.S. housing starts were even weaker than forecast in August but the news had little market impact.

Instead the market’s dominant theme seemed to be the degree to which investors were ready to shoulder riskier assets like stocks instead of safe-haven U.S. government debt.

NEW YORK, Sept 19 (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury market rose on Monday as the market looked forward to more monetary easing from the Federal Reserve and traders awaited developments on the euro zone debt situation.

As they have for weeks, long-dated Treasuries US30YT=RR outperformed shorter ones on the expectation that one aspect of the Fed’s next easing attempt will be a gradual shift in its balance sheet composition toward longer-dated securities. The Fed holds a two-day monetary policy meeting on Sept. 20-21.

In early dealings, benchmark 10-year notes US10YR=RR rose 16/32, their yields easing to 1.99 percent from 2.05 percent on Friday. Thirty-year bonds rose 1-10/32, their yields falling to 3.25 percent from 3.31 percent on Friday.

In contrast, two-year Treasury notes US2YR=RR were unchanged, yielding 0.17 percent. The Fed has said it will keep short-term interest rates near zero at least until mid-2013.

Worries about the euro zone’s debt situation pushed U.S. bond prices up and their yields even lower, as such concerns typically inspire a flight to quality to safe-haven U.S. debt.

Traders were awaiting the results of a conference call between EU and IMF inspectors and Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos later on Monday. Without fiscal reforms, lenders have threatened to withhold the next tranche of bailout aid for Greece — without which the country is expected to run out of cash in October.

(Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) – U.S. government debt prices fell on Thursday as a global central bank plan to provide three-month dollar loans to European financial firms encouraged investors to move into riskier assets like stocks.

News that U.S. inflation rose more than expected in August offered a subplot: bond investors dislike inflation because it erodes the buying power of fixed-income investments.

Fron a broader perspective, however, the Federal Reserve prefers mild inflation to the risk of deflation because the latter dynamic causes people to refrain from economic activity as they await lower prices, slowing the economy even more.

But grabbing the most attention was news that major central banks around the world had decided to offer three-month U.S. dollar loans to commercial banks to prevent money markets from freezing up in the wake of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

The European Central Bank said that in coordination with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, it would hold three fixed-rate operations between October and December to offer banks as many dollars as needed to ease any funding year-end funding crunch. [ID:nL5E7KF2EO])

“Investors have worried for weeks that a liquidity crisis was brewing in the European banking system and that fear caused yields on safe-haven Treasuries to dip below 2 percent,” said Jeffrey Cleveland, senior economist at Los Angeles-based Payden & Rygel, with $60 billion in assets under management.

“The announcement that the Fed and the ECB would make sure there is dollar liquidity for three months was the real driver today,” he said.

NEW YORK, Sept 14 (Reuters) – Most U.S. Treasuries prices slipped on Wednesday as steps to resolve Europe’s debt crisis drew investors to riskier assets such as stocks — to the detriment of safe-haven U.S. government debt.

Data showing that U.S. retail sales were flat in August and a well-bid 30-year Treasury bond auction fueled some short-lived gains, but steady stock market gains that propelled major indexes up by more than 1 percent left bonds in a downward drift.

“Weaker-than-forecast retail sales figures and a delayed vote on changes to the euro zone’s EFSF bailout fund by an Austrian parliamentary panel did generate a bit of a safe-haven bid this morning,” said John Canavan, market analyst at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey.

Outside of that, however, a “moderately weak tone” prevailed in the bond market throughout the day, briefly interrupted when the 30-year Treasury bond auction stirred a bid, mainly in that sector of the curve.

In late trade, benchmark 10-year Treasury notes US10YT=RR were down 3/32, their yield at 2.01 percent, while 30-year bonds were up 19/32, their yield at 3.29 percent.

With the exception of the 30-year bond, Treasuries traded in fairly narrow ranges as steps to resolve Europe’s debt crisis overcame fears that Greece could default on its debt.

Europe’s top bureaucrat said plans for a common euro zone bond, seen by many as a key tool to ease the region’s festering debt crisis, would soon be presented. For details, see [ID:nLDE78D03R]

NEW YORK, Sept 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury 30-year bond advanced after the Treasury’s auction of the security on Wednesday, outperforming the rest of the market.

The strong bid for the $13 billion in 30-year bonds stirred a bid that erased losses across the yield curve.

For its part, the 30-year bond erased a pre-auction loss and climbed 27/32 after the sale. Its yield, which moves inversely to price, fell to 3.28 percent.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes US10YT=RR were down just 1/32 afterward, yielding 2 percent.

“This was the most aggressively bid 30-year bond sale since the March 2011 auction, which also stopped 2.9 basis points short,” said Thomas Simons, money market economist at Jefferies & Co in New York.

In contrast, last month’s new issue auction tailed 9.4 basis points, Simons noted.

The 2.85 bid cover ratio was the strongest since March 2011 and a solid improvement over the 2.08 ratio in the new issue auction last month, he noted.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Treasury prices slipped on Tuesday before a 10-year note auction as stocks clung to the plus column, damping demand for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

Preparation for a 1 p.m. auction of $21 billion in 10-year notes also drove some of the selling which occurred despite a weak Italian bond auction earlier in the day. U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday led by big-cap technology shares.

“You’ve got kind of a turn away from the flight-to-quality bid, and all of a sudden you’ve got to bid on 10-year notes at one o’clock, so 10s and 30s are leading prices lower,” said Richard Gilhooly, interest rate strategist at TD Securities in New York.

The steeper losses in long-dated securities stood in contrast to the recent outperformance of those instruments relative to shorter maturities. That trend emerged when markets began to price in another potential round of monetary easing.

Though the method of such monetary accommodation remains uncertain and the notion of more easing, itself, will face some opposition at next week’s Fed policy meeting, the possibility the Fed would either buy more bonds or increase the average maturity of its holdings has favored long-dated issues.

Thirty-year bonds fell 1-3/32 in price, their yields rising to 3.31 percent from 3.25 percent on Monday.

The Treasury Department is preparing to sell $21 billion in re-opened 10-year notes at 1 p.m. in the second of three auctions scheduled this week.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Treasuries prices finished lower on Monday after late stock market gains and a report that Italy had asked China to buy Italian debt damped the bid for safe-haven U.S. government debt.

The Financial Times reported on its website that Italy had asked China to make “significant” purchases of Italian debt,

The report counter-balanced some of the fears that Greece could default and damage French banks, which hold much Greek debt.

Italian officials told the FT that Lou Jiwei, chairman of China Investment Corp, headed a delegation to Rome last week to meet with Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti and Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. Two weeks ago Italian officials were in Beijing to meet CIC and China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which manages the bulk of China’s foreign exchange reserves, the FT said.

The prospect of a major buyer stepping up to the plate to buy the debt of the third-largest economy in the euro zone lifted a cloud of worry from stock investors’ collective brow and stocks quickly erased the day’s losses and finished in the plus column.

At the same time, the notion that the financial world might be a shade less risky than thought allowed risk-averse investors to let go of some of their safe-haven U.S. debt.

Benchmark 10-year notes, down 2/32 in price in early afternoon trading, were down 11/32 after the report about Italy and China, leaving their yields at 1.96 percent, up from 1.92 percent at Friday’s close.

NEW YORK/LONDON, Sept 9 (Reuters) – A key measure of financial stress hit its widest level in more than two years on Friday on euro zone challenges and uncertainty about the outcome of a Group of Seven financial summit.

Measures of counterparty risk remained elevated as G7 finance ministers and central bankers met in Marseille, under pressure to find new solutions to the global slowdown and debt crises on both sides of the Atlantic. For more, see: [ID:nL5E7K61TC]

Risk aversion intensified as sources told Reuters ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark would quit because of a conflict over the bank’s bond-buying program [ID:nL5E7K91OQ] and as investors waited to see how many banks sign up for a Greek bond swap.

“We’re looking at a situation with similarities to 2008 in that there are some issues of concern with banks in the U.S., but this time much more so with banks in Europe because they have short-term liabilities that need to be placed and rolled over continuously,” said Robert Tipp, chief investment strategist for Prudential Fixed Income, with $240 billion in assets under management.

“Given that backdrop, and the fact that all of the European banks have exposure to each other and have exposure to the sovereigns, the fears can easily run ahead of the reality in terms of credit risk, resulting in credit spreads widening in chunks,” Tipp said.

Even “trophy institutions” that realistically would be highly unlikely to have a credit event have felt the brunt of some of those fears, he said.

“A best-case scenario would be if policymakers were able to isolate Greece from the pack because most of the other sovereigns are, kicking and screaming aside, following through on their fiscal austerity programs,” Tipp said.