Robert Morse, you da man, very knowledgeable guy. I been doing something similar for couple decades but not going for the huge percentages cause for one stability and another for exchange rates will kill and then some, against the dollar when you exchange back into USD if you got in wrong. It is like someone from Japan decides to buy US Bonds, they have to exchange from Yen to USD, USD is at highs and Japan Yen lows, so trader keeps for five years and USD declines 75%, so when trader exchanges back to Yen, they actually lost ton of money for 3%. I sell certain 9 year highs/ buy lows, so like right now am short USD and found 3 foreign currencies that are low and went long in futures, so taking that account for doing so, exchange from USD to those 3 currencies and broker buys me that countries bonds or money market rates, plus I can still trade at that countries exchanges. And if too early, I hedge till currency head up. I do normally keep them in other currencies for few years. Really have to keep track of your currency and which country to want to get interest rate.
Great! This link is pretty close to what I was looking for. I agree that there is NO free and safe way AT ALL. Personally at least 10 or 20 countries SHOULD BE basketed, to avoid bankrupcy risk of one or two countries. If current using IB offers such lending, I may invest the national bond (with 20 diversified equally).
In the early days of the internet, I did not want to use my name. I used "Udda Man". It's funny when you get spam addressed to Dear Udda.....
You are not quite understanding the risk issue. Countries don't go bankrupt. They print money. They devalue their currency. THAT is the risk. You will earn your rate of return and lose 10 times that rate when converting back into dollars. Please make sure you understand this. Diversification does not really help here. If the dollar strengthens against the basket, the entire basket will lose value.
Most country, central bank can print currency (instead of REAL MONEY) as much as they want. Devaluation is also one of many risks too. Many says FRB raise prime rate this winter, also other countries may follow the rate increase too. If so, probably this kind of (national or sovereign) bond investing might be better to start 2017 or 2018.