Are the travails of the bond market, like Macbeth expounds, a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?" The billionaire class — so incorrectly sought after by the media — so often seems to use the bond market as a sort of intellectual cudgel. That's why I always start my discussion on bonds with the simple query of "where are the layoffs, not forget about stocks, think fixed income." Here the bond market polices only those companies that haven't pivoted to making a profit. They, among all sectors, could be pummeled by the bond market freeze and by the consumers' paralysis.

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