"Bloomberg reported on Friday the opinion of [name withheld to avoid embarrassment], an interest rate strategist at [name of bank withheld to avoid embarrassment]. [Name withheld to avoid embarrassment] has just joined [name of bank withheld to avoid embarrassment] having previously worked at another bankrupt investment bank, namely [name of Wall Street bank withheld to avoid embarrassment]. His opinion is that US Treasury bonds are outrageously cheap and that next year will be the year of the bond. He may be right. On the other hand, he may be catastrophically wrong. His employer, for example, which is effectively in government ownership having wrecked its own balance sheet and impoverished most of its shareholders, is also the UK bank with the single biggest exposure to the troubled holding company Dubai World. (As Shakespeare once said, when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.) Never mind. His previous employer, a US investment bank that wrecked its own balance sheet and impoverished most of its shareholders, is now a unit of a commercial bank that itself required emergency government support. Never mind. You can’t necessarily be right all of the time. Or indeed any of the time."

Tim goes on to quote from Edmund Andrews of the New York Times who makes the point that a more rational analysis is to compare US national debt with an ARM (variable rate mortgage) with an initial discount or teaser period -

“The US government is financing its more than trillion dollar a year borrowing with IOU’s on terms that seem too good to be true. But that happy situation, aided by ultra-low interest rates, may not last much longer. Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed. Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages. With the national debt now topping $12 trillion.. an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a non-partisan group.. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”