Treasury Marketable Securities Regulations

This page focuses on the laws and regulations for bills, notes, bonds, TIPS, and FRNs.

It links to rules and other information about the different systems in which you can hold your Treasury securities, as well as rules about buybacks and our collateral programs.

You may also be interested in the other pages about laws and regulations as described in the boxes below.

Authorizing Statutes

These are the laws that authorize us to sell securities and that govern securities brokers and dealers. The links go to the website of the Government Publishing Office (GPO). GPO has the official legal text.

• Sale of Treasury Securities 31 U.S.C. Title 31, Subtitle III, Subchapter I authorizes Treasury to borrow money and Subtitle II governs the administration of debt.

Regulations

Regulations tell how to carry out the laws. Treasury regulations are in Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations (31 CFR).

The current rules are at the website, https://www.ecfr.gov.

The regulations are also Treasury department circulars, and you can reach many of them through our page on CFR department circulars.

Uniform Offering Circular (UOC)

The UOC sets out the terms and conditions for selling and issuing Treasury marketable securities. (UOC, 31 CFR 356, PDF)

TRADES – Treasury/Reserve Automated Debt Entry System (The Commercial Book-Entry System)

When you buy, hold, or sell securities with a bank, broker, or dealer outside of Treasury, your securities are in the commercial book-entry system (CBES). TRADES (31 CFR 357) is the regulation that governs Treasury securities in the CBES.

The TRADES regulation is based on Revised Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), which deals with investment securities. In issuing the TRADES regulation, we did not preempt state law for those states that have adopted a version of Article 8 of the UCC that is substantially identical to Revised Article 8.

For more about TRADES, Revised Article 8 of the UCC, and state adoptions that are substantially identical, see our page on TRADES – in Depth.

Buybacks

• Final Buyback Rules: On January 19, 2000, we issued the final rules that set out the terms and conditions by which we may redeem (buy back) outstanding, unmatured marketable Treasury securities. (Buyback rules, 31 CFR 375, PDF)
• Historical information: August 1999 proposed version of the buyback rules (PDF)
• Historical information: 1999 comment letters received on proposed Treasury buy-back rules

See also our page about the Buyback program.

TreasuryDirect

You can buy and manage your Treasury electronic securities in our TreasuryDirect program. The rules governing TreasuryDirect are in 31 CFR 363.

See also our page about TreasuryDirect.

Legacy Treasury Direct

We are phasing out our old program, Legacy Treasury Direct. You can no longer use that program to buy Treasury securities. But if you have securities in Legacy Treasury Direct, you can continue to manage them there.

The rules governing Legacy Treasury Direct are in 31 CFR 357 Subpart C.

See also our page about Legacy Treasury Direct.