But Bernanke fell short of announcing bold QE, rather, he chose to save his bullets and only extend Operation Twist, by which the Fed is attempting to lower longer-term interest rates by extending the average maturity of its Treasury portfolio.

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The accounting rules do allow you to designate assets as being held to maturity, or being held in the short-term.

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When interest rates were plunging in 2000--03, these geniuses decided to shorten the average maturity instead of locking in long-term low yields.

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With some of its earlier backers now gone, I believe Facebook lacks the maturity in its executive team to go after a long term play like this, that requires commitment to infrastructure investment.

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This is not a problem if you hold a bond to maturity (unless you recently bought a newly issued long-term bond), but it will adversely impact bond fund prices.

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It required banks to write down the value of assets (such as long-term bonds) to market value, even if the banks intended to hold them until maturity.

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The intention is that these would be longer-term loans with a maturity of about 10 years, that small businesses find hard to prise out of our risk-averse banks.

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At the same time Vanguard's New York Long-Term Tax-Exempt Fund, with an average duration of 6.8 years, offered a yield to maturity of 3.8%.

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