Bond market now is like a miscalibrated, unreliable speedometer

New York

THE financial media tend to report breathlessly about what the stock market did yesterday. But savvy economic analysts have always known that the bond market is the place to look for a real sense of where the economy is going, or at least where the smart money thinks it is going.

And right now, if the bond market is correctly predicting the economic path ahead, we should all be terrified.