Give me 2-year notes or give me death!

Okay, so I'm butchering the famous Patrick Henry quotation from 1775. But I think it definitely applies to the sentiment of buyers in today's auction of 2-year Treasury Notes. Uncle Sam sold $18 billion of said notes today. The bid to cover ratio, which measures the volume of bids submitted versus the amount of notes sold, was a whopping 3.97. That's up from 2.59 at the July 25 auction and the highest going back several years (Bloomberg says it's the highest since at least September 1992, Tony Crescenzi at Realmoney.com says it's the highest since at least 1989). The notes were also sold at a yield of 4.115%, below pre-auction forecasts of 4.155%.

What's it mean? That investors are still clamoring for safe investments rather than risky bonds. Central bankers the world over have thrown tens of billions of dollars at the market in an attempt to re-liquify things and restore normalcy to the non-government bond market. But so far, it looks like people still want their T-bills and T-notes.