10. The introduction of money market mutual funds with check writing privileges in response to inflation and double digit interest rates in the 1970s serves as a great example.

11. To be totally correct, the yield-curve should really represent yields on “zero coupon” government bonds, the purest of all interest rates (technically referred to as “spot” rates). We make the jump, as most yield-curve pictures do, from zero coupon to coupon-bearing bonds (that is, from spot rates to yields) in our analysis.

12. A fuller treatment, one that space does not allow for here, of how these factors determine the shape of the yield-curve can be found in Steven Dym, The Complete Practitioner’s Guide to the Bond Market.