I keep watching the steady march of China towards world domination, and their currency (the yuan) getting bigger and stronger until it achieves reserve status and replaces the worthless dollar; and people around the world will say, "Fooey on the dollar!" and I will get really nervous like I do every time some dirtbag country starts getting uppity like they are going to begin paying us back for the misery we have inflicted on them, and their friends, for the last century or so.

And yet I eat a lot of Chinese food, which seems somehow unpatriotic, but like most self-absorbed gluttons, I cannot stop because I don't want to, just like I still eat tacos even though Mexico is taking over the USA, and I am uneasy about that, too, and I walk around outdoors without an aluminum foil hat to shield my brains from interstellar rays and invisible CIA cameras reading my thoughts.

The second half of 2008 will be remembered as the era in which justifiably panicked investors fled the global equity markets and flooded into the bond markets, particularly the U.S. Treasury market. As I write this, the migration largely continues.

For those investors and market observers who put a high premium on rationality it seems perverse that so many are accepting the historically low returns offered in the U.S. Treasury market, particularly in the short end, where yields are near zero. At some intra-day prices, yields have even turned negative.