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For the first time since the 1980s, the U.S. Treasury has decided to sell 20-year bonds. "All it took was for the U.S. budget deficit to explode into the trillions," Barron's Randall Forsyth wrote today. 

A 20-year bond isn't all that novel, given that the U.S. government already sells 10- and 30-year securities. But it's one more tool in the federal arsenal to fund the coming wave of Covid-19 related debt. The Treasury needs to raise $2.99 trillion this quarter and $4.5 trillion in the fiscal year ending in September. 

The re-introduction of a 20-year bond raises a bigger question, though, Randy says. Should the U.S. sell a 100-year bond?  There's a good argument for it. Here's Randy: 

Other countries have gone that route, including Austria, which last year issued a second tranche of its 2.1% bonds due in 2117. For bond investors to lock in their money well into the next century for so paltry a coupon and in a currency, the euro, with only a limited track record, seemed crazy at the time. They were the wise ones, as the Austrian century bonds recently traded at a price over 200, or twice their face value.

Some U.S. universities have already issued 100-year bonds, Randy notes. They've returned 30% over the past year. 

Randy advocated for a 100-year bond back in a 2016 Barron's cover story: "Given that the United States of America is 240 years old and has an infinite life expectancy, we hope, issuing 50-year or 100-year bonds makes sense."

A century from now, we even can be confident that Covid-19 will be a thing of the distant past.