The $9.4 trillion U.S. government bond market is proving Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke matters more than Standard & Poor’s, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

Even though the United States is poised to run a budget deficit of $1.6 trillion and S&P removed the nation’s AAA rating, investors are lending the government money at record-low rates. Four days after the downgrade to AA+, the Treasury sold $32 billion of three-year notes to yield 0.5 percent. When the U.S. was running budget surpluses from 1998 through 2001, Treasuries of similar maturity yielded an average of 5.23 percent.

For all the conflict between Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration over the debt ceiling and deficits, bond investors say they are more influenced by interest rates, the economy and inflation. Because of the dollar’s preeminent place as the world’s reserve currency, the United States enjoys a “funding advantage,” S&P said in its Aug. 5 report.

“As long as I’ve been watching the market, there’s been very little correlation between fiscal activity and interest rates,” said Jay Mueller, a senior money manager who invests about $3 billion in bonds at Wells Fargo Capital Management in Milwaukee and who started his career in the 1980s. “There’s a long, long period of time where a nation’s fiscal condition can deteriorate where there isn’t much of an impact on interest rates.”

Bernanke boosted debt markets Tuesday when the Fed pledged to keep its target rate for overnight loans between banks at a record low of zero to 0.25 percent at least through mid-2013 to revive growth that it described as “considerably slower” than anticipated. Gross domestic product rose at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter, after expanding at a 0.4 percent pace in the prior three-month period, which was the weakest since the recovery began in June 2009.