Thank you, TurkeyBreath. My reasoning may be faulty, but here is why I wanted to put I-bonds in an IRA. I am of retirement age and trying to reallocate my IRA money, which is more than my non-IRA savings. I'm inclined to allocate the non-tax-deferred money to municipal bonds and to stock funds. So it's a matter of which funds to use how. However, what I wanted to do may not be possible--and maybe it's a bad idea anyway.

Initial question: I would like to purchase government I-bonds to sit in a regular IRA account, but I don't know how to bring this about. I inquired of two banks where I have accounts, and they couldn't pull this off...

You may buy them directly from Uncle Sam, see link below.

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/sav/sbiinvst.htm

But why put them into an IRA? Unless you're deducting from income. If you buy and hold, you'll only pay taxes upon cashing them in. Almost like combo Roth/reg IRA.

TB