Interest rates are supposed to reflect credit-worthiness but …

Interest rates are supposed to reflect credit-worthiness of a country, thus investors should require financially weak countries to pay higher interest rates to compensate for risk.

That makes it difficult to explain why a 10-year government bond in the United States yields 2.05 percent, while 10-year bonds in France, Italy and Spain yield 0.53 percent, 1.25 percent and 1.23 percent, respectively.

And some bond rates are negative in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden.

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