A Good Day for Treasuries

In anticipation of speeches given Friday by Esther George, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and Patrick Harker, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, U.S. Treasuries saw a drop in yields, according to a report.

Treasury yields are commonly linked to mortgage interest rates, and Friday’s drop could foreshadow the same for mortgage rates. Yields on the 10-year treasury dropped to 2.04 percent, a reduction n of 2.5 basis points, and 30-year bonds fell two basis points landing at 2.65 percent. The 2-year note fell to 1.26 percent, 1.5 basis points.

In his speech at the New Perspectives on Consumer Behavior in Credit & Payments Conference, Harker discussed consumer behavior in the field, in which he outlined the creation of the Consumer Finance Institute (CFI), the office’s history, and the work the Philadelphia Fed has been doing to continue research on the subject.

“The absence of a fully developed field of robust research on consumer credit fundamentally indicates that we didn’t acknowledge that it touches every aspect of the economy. Consumer issues are intertwined and interwoven, inextricable from virtually every economic issue,” he said in his opening remarks.

George, whose Kansas City offices and branches spread to Denver, Omaha, and Oklahoma City, is scheduled to give her speech at 6:15 p.m. EDT.