Yup.

The other ones - relatively new - are infrastructure and stuff like ETF's, but even there some of the players have over-done the gearing...

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

Well, just consider the Italian 10 year bond which suddenly has a spread of 60 bp compared to German ones. According to the article, the reason the spread suddenly exploded was due to a flight to quality, or rather to liquidity. As an ordinary saver, you don't really need liquidity, at least if the duration is a bit shorter than 10 years. (I missed the duration in my last comment which kind of reduced the relevance of my comment, but anyway.) If the spread on 1 year bonds exploded too, that might be really interesting, as a private person should have no solvency problems holding on to a bond for a year without having to sell it on the market. At least if the minimum value of an Italian bond is the same as a Swedish, almost €3000.

I might have completely misunderstood what we are talking about here though.

By the way, why wouldn't TIPS give a real return against inflation? They are linked to the CPI, so that's exactly what they are supposed to do.

Or is the "core inflation" ghost around?

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Pierre:

And remember: the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Great line - and scary thought.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris