High-quality securities that are assumed to be risk free, or commercial paper that is issued by solid blue-chip companies that have minimal risk of default. Fine paper will trade at a small spread over government issued fixed-income securities to reflect their marginal risk over truly risk-free debt. 



|||Fine paper, by virtue of its sterling credit quality, generally offers yields that are lower than those of lower rated securities. In the fourth quarter of 2008, however, the credit crunch resulted in a near-total freeze of the U.S. commercial paper market, and even the finest of paper was subject to financial uncertainty.