Nearly Failed Treasury Auction?

Hmmm.  Interesting.
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I realize this sounds complicated, so simply think of it this way:
1) Direct Buyers: folks who buy straight from the Treasury, typically comprising a minor stake in US debt purchases
2) Indirect Buyers: folks who buy LARGE chunks of US debt, typically Foreign Governments
3) Primary Dealers: banks that HAVE to buy US debt to ensure an auction doesn’t fail. You don’t want to see a lot of Primary Dealer purchases as this means that those who can CHOOSE to buy US debt DON’T want to.
On Wednesday, February 10, 2010, the US Treasury issued $16 billion in 30-year Treasuries. Here are the buyer data points:

Buyer	Purchase Amount (%)
Primary Dealers	47%
Direct Buyers	24% (A RECORD)
Indirect Buyers	28%

First of all, we see Direct Buyers hit a RECORD percentage of purchases. This is extremely bizarre and somewhat disconcerting given that we have no way of knowing who these buyers are. For all we know, they could be the Federal Reserve itself or other US Government entities buying “off the radar.”
Indeed, on that note, we know that the US Federal Reserve accounted for 11% of the total purchases. Folks, you’re not dealing with a healthy debt auction when the Fed accounts for 10% of purchases.
However, far, FAR more worrisome is the pathetic Indirect Buyer takedown: 28%. Historically this number has been more around 40% (Tyler at ZeroHedge notes that the average Indirect purchase of the last four long-term Treasury auctions was 39.9%). To see such a MASSIVE drop off in Indirect Buyers (40% down to 28%) is a MAJOR warning sign that Foreign Governments are no longer willing to buy long-term US debt.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/188380-the-u-s-land-of-the-free-and-home-of-a-nearly-failed-treasury-auction-of-its-own?source=article_sb_popular