That is, the banks assign one rating that reflects a borrower's overall creditworthiness, and another for each individual exposure that takes into account collateral, seniority, and other factors that affect how much a bank is likely to lose on that specific exposure if the borrower defaults.
However, those on instruments maturing beyond the year-end are relatively high partly due to market participants’ concern over the Year 2000 problem. The Japan premium has continued to be nearly zero. Yields on long-term government bonds fell to the level of 1.6 percent in the middle of July, but have slightly increased to 1.8-1.9 percent.