Wall Street Journal, 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.     Some of these agencies are government owned, and therefore can be viewed as branches of the U.S. government. Thus their debt is fully free of default risk. Ginnie Mae is an example of a government-owned agency. Other agencies, such as the farm credit agencies, the Federal Home Loan Bank, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, are merely federally sponsored. Although the debt of federally sponsored agencies is not explicitly insured by the fed- eral government, it is widely assumed that the government would step in with assistance if an agency neared default. Thus these securities are considered extremely safe assets, and their yield spread above Treasury securities is usually small.     International Bonds   Many firms borrow abroad and many investors buy bonds from foreign issuers. In addition to national capital markets, there is a thriving international capital market, largely centered in London, where banks of over 70 countries have offices. A Eurobond is a bond denominated in a currency other than that of the country in which it is issued. For example, a dollar-denominated bond sold in Britain would be called a Eu- rodollar bond. Similarly, investors might speak of Euroyen bonds, yen-denominated bonds sold outside Japan. Since the new European currency is called the euro, the term Eurobond may be confusing. It is best to think of them simply as international bonds. In contrast to bonds that are issued in foreign currencies, many firms issue bonds in foreign countries but in the currency of the investor. For example, a Yankee bond is a I. Introduction 2. Markets and Instruments The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2001           38 PART I Introduction     dollar-denominated bond sold by a non-U.S. issuer. Similarly, Samurai bonds are