The second alarm is the widening in the spread between LIBOR and the relatively risk-free interest rate known as OIS (overnight indexed swap).
Values lurched downward as investors in British property woke up and stopped accepting ever lower yields: at one stage these had dropped below even yields on risk-free government bonds (see chart).
Yet nuclear power proved costly and far from risk-free.
While there is speculation that supposedly risk-free governments might default, that conservatism looks merited.
How these firms adapt to a world in which Banks are no longer seen as risk-free is the tests' unanswered question.
In the end, the world's insatiable demand for the "risk-free" reserve asset will make that asset anything but risk-free.
A trader buys a stock or foreign exchange in one market and sells it immediately in another market for risk-free profit.
The difference is that bank drafts issued by Banks, bank payment to bank credit as a guarantee, the basic risk-free, can only be used for off-site billing.
But no one knew how far the landscape had changed: which euro-zone countries would be allowed to go bust? Which debt remained risk-free?
Banks, for example, have habitually treated their governments' debt as risk-free.
The inevitable levering of asset structures to double or quadruple returns relative to risk-free assets?
Brazilian investors can no longer reap extraordinary returns just from parking their money in risk-free bonds.
A sudden loss of confidence in all sovereign debt, and especially in American Treasuries, the world's benchmark "risk-free" asset, would have calamitous consequences in a still-fragile recovery.
The website offers a 100% risk-free trial of the product, and the site doesn't try to fool customers into signing up for hidden offers or those controversial "auto-ship" programs.
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