How strange is the world we're living in?
I'll let http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/10/can-i-please-go-back-to-my-home-timeline-now.html answer that:
If you had told me four years ago that come October 2010 I would be forecasting that highly-efficient American steel companies would be operating at only 70% of normal capacity in 2011, that the U.S. Treasury would be able to borrow for 30 years at 1.61%/year real and at 3.71% per year nominal placing all inflation risk on the creditor, and that the last six months' CPI inflation would be 0.1% at an annual rate...
...I would simply not have believed you. I would have said that that could happen in some strange alternate universe in which Spock was evil and had a beard, but not in any real world that could plausibly exist.
If you had told me four years ago that come October 2010 I would be forecasting that highly-efficient American steel companies would be operating at only 70% of normal capacity in 2011, that the U.S. Treasury would be able to borrow for 30 years at 1.61%/year real and at 3.71% per year nominal placing all inflation risk on the creditor, and that the last six months' CPI inflation would be 0.1% at an annual rate...
...I would simply not have believed you. I would have said that that could happen in some strange alternate universe in which Spock was evil and had a beard, but not in any real world that could plausibly exist.