You submit a bid. The window closes. The results come back and your allocation is zero, or a sliver of what you wanted, and there is no rejection notice, no explanation, no phone call. The government sold its bonds. You just weren't part of it. From the outside, the process looked open. From where you're standing, something closed you out silently, and the machinery that did it will never introduce itself.

That experience is not a glitch. It is a structural feature, embedded in the auction's architecture long before the bidding window opens. The mechanics that determine who gets allocation access, and who quietly doesn't, require getting into the plumbing.