Today the U.S. Treasury Department is offering $15 billion of floating-rate notes, with interest to be paid on April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31, and a maturity date of January 31, 2016. For investors, the "floaters" can serve as a hedge against potentially rising interest rates. For Treasury, they're an opportunity to capitalize on robust investor demand for the safest short-term investments. "Floating rate notes bring additional diversity to Treasury's current portfolio and help support our goal of saving taxpayer dollars by financing the government's borrowing needs at the lowest cost over time," Mary Miller, the Treasury's undersecretary for domestic finance, said last week.

This is the Treasury Department's first new security in 17 years. Additional sales of floaters will occur in April, July, and October, with two reopenings in the subsequent months of each quarter, the Treasury Department said.

On January 31, 2014, the first day of trading for the bonds, Bloomberg Indexes will launch a Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Floating Rate Bond Index to track this and future securities issued in this asset class.