Ya know, I really did like inflation-indexed U.S. savings bonds. I liked them even when the fixed rates on them fell down. Now I think they’re ridiculous. Not a friendly little way to keep your money safe anymore.

Here’s how they work: Inflation-adjusted savings bonds pay you a combination of a fixed rate and a variable rate that is based on the rate of inflation. Twice a year, each May and November, the Treasury tells you what the new rates will be, based on changes in the consumer price index and what’s happening in the credit markets.

But you must understand that these are 30-year bonds. So whatever the Treasury sets as the fixed rate is what you’ll get for the life of the bond in addition to that variable rate, which changes twice a year.

So, if the fixed rate is 2 percent, that’s what you get on top of the inflation rate, for 30 years. The fixed rate on bonds sold between last November and April 30 was 1.2 percent.

Then last week, the Treasury said the new fixed rate would be zero. Nothing.

I don’t know how they came up with that. The credit markets may be not working well, but people still pay interest, far as I can tell. I’m sure they have a formula, just as I’m sure it makes no sense.

So if you buy a bond now, you get the inflation-adjusted rate and that’s all. That’s 4.84 percent, which is a nice rate. But going forward, if inflation drops, you get less.

Buying these savings bonds now is a bet on inflation going up and up and up. That’s the only way buying and holding one of these things is attractive at all.

How ridiculous. To tie savings to prices blowing up.

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