Run, Don't Walk From Treasuries

"Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser ... . The very idea of losing is hateful to an American." -- General George S. Patton

Why would any rational investor buy a long term U.S. Treasury today? This may seem like a strange question to ask right now.

Historically, at least since World War II and considering the dominant position of the dollar and the U.S. economy, Treasuries have usually been the ultimate safe haven investment in troubled times. These are troubled times, possibly the worst since the Great Depression, so why would a rational investor want to avoid Treasuries?

Here are a few reasons. In just the last month, the U.S. government has basically taken on nearly $7 trillion dollars of additional liabilities. I arrive at this number by adding the debt of Fannie Mae (FNM Quote) and Freddie Mac (FRE Quote), plus the rescue package, and the expansion of Fed's balance sheet. Our gross domestic product (GDP) is about $13 trillion, so that's an enormous amount of debt to add in just one month.

Further, the government has now explicitly increased bank deposit insurance, provided an implicit guarantee to trillions of dollars of money market funds and is in the process of now buying hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate commercial paper.

All of this means that the supply of Treasuries hitting the market to pay for all of this is going to be enormous. Also, the dramatic increase in future liabilities, without any offset in increased revenue, of the U.S. government reduces the creditworthiness of the U.S. as a borrower.

This is already reflected in higher premiums for credit default swaps, which are insurance against a future default, on U.S. Treasuries. Do you really believe this is end of how much money the government is going to spend to fix the financial system and prop up the banks? Nobody knows how big this problem is or how much more the government will need to spend or guarantee to fix it.