Savings Bond Alert #018
Thursday, March 16th, 2006
Categorized as: Savings Bond Alerts
Inflation and Series I Savings Bond sales move towards normal
The Consumer Price Index for February, which was released this morning, was 198.7, still a tenth of a point below September’s 198.8. The level for March, which will be announced on April 19, will determine the inflation component for the next Series I bond rate.
The next I bond inflation component is likely to be positive, but may set a new record low. Historically, the lowest inflation component has been 0.56%, which was used for I bond rate periods beginning in November 2001.
The 5.70% inflation component being used right now is the highest since I bonds were introduced, so in any case, the component is going to drop dramatically. Here’s more information on the I bond inflation component.
Sales of Series I bonds cooled in February to an annual rate of $10.9 billion, down from January’s record month of $18.0 billion (annual rate). However, this is still more than double the average I bond sales rate during the last three fiscal years, which has been about $4 billion per year. Here’s more information about last month’s Savings Bond sales.
A sample of the other stories on the Savings Bond Advisor web site in the last month include:
After six years, over 400 posts, 3,680 real comments, and over 90,000 spam comments (thank you, Akismet, for making managing a blog with comments possible), I am closing public comments on Savings-Bond-Advisor.com. I will contine to update the main articles on this site, but not the comments.
Virtually every question about Savings Bonds has been asked and answered on this site multiple times. Use the search feature (see the box in the gray area near the top of this page) or the detailed menu on the lower part of the home page to find the information you're looking for.
Tom Adams