MARKET ORACLE
The US ten-year Treasury yielded 8% as recently as 1994, and as low as 2.1% during the crash. Recently the consensus target was 4%—before fears of outright deflation drove it to 2.4%. Bond yields have fallen below 1%. Even the bonds of the southern members of the Eurozone yield Treasury-esque returns.
Remarkably, those low yields persist even as major geopolitical outbursts have ended the mostly benign post-Cold War era. The foundations of global economic progress are being shaken by geopolitical earthquakes from Russia and Ukraine to Syria and Iraq, where a new caliphate has been proclaimed.
It seems bizarre, but the world is heading toward a revival of both the Cold War and the Ottoman Empire.