from Reuters:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Is Campbell's Soup a better bet than U.S. government debt?
No, we're not talking about stocking a bunker for survival. This is talk about safe investments.
U.S. Treasuries, traditionally considered the safest of all investments because the debt is backed by full faith and credit of the U.S. government, is losing favor among derivatives traders to Campbell Soup Co, Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp as concerns over the government's massive deficits and costly bailouts mount.
Investors are apparently concerned that sovereign debt of the United States, the world's biggest economy, is more vulnerable to a huge sell-off than bonds of these three companies amid the most protracted economic downturn in decades, strategists said.
Those concerns are reflected in the pricing of credit default swaps, which are used both to insure bonds against default and to place bets on the likelihood of default, of Treasuries and of the three companies.
The cost to insure debt of the United States with credit default swaps for five years was 43.7 basis points on Monday, versus just 27.4 basis points for Campbell Soup and 29.8 basis points for Intel Corp , according to data from CMA DataVision. Higher prices for credit default swaps, or CDS, reflect a greater perception of a risk of default.
