Did US Treasury Bond Interest Rates increase After Moody's and S&P announced Rating Reviews?

Moody's said it was reviewing the U.S. rating at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13. S&P announced its review during the day on Friday, July 15th. Yet, here are the interest rates for 10 year US Treasury Bonds for last week. There was a slight increase on Thursday, but by Friday the rate had fallen back to where it had started at the beginning of the week. The data is available here.

07,11, 2011 2.94%
07,12, 2011 2.92%
07,13, 2011 2.92%
07,14, 2011 2.98%
07,15, 2011 2.94%

Looking at this there are two possible conclusions. 1) The announcement was already anticipated. 2) These announcements don't really reflect any real likelihood of default. Some evidence that it isn't the first option is that the interest rate on US Treasury Bonds have generally been falling as the discussion about defaults has increased.


A note on Minnesota's shutdown. Minnesota's shutdown started on July 1st and could end shortly, and Fitch Ratings downloaded the state's bond rating from AAA to AA+. Fitch is the smallest of the rating agencies, and none of the other rating agencies lowered the state's rating. The AP notes:

Fitch Ratings downgraded the state's bond rating a notch from AAA to AA+, citing the government interruption and "an increasingly contentious budgeting environment." . . .

But I can't see any impact that the shutdown or this one bond rating change had on general obligation state bonds.

What types of comments are the Democrats making about the debt ceiling increase? From Politico:

The warnings are apocalyptic. “Armageddon,” President Barack Obama intones. “Catastrophic,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner insists. “Calamitous,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke admonishes. . . .