Does anyone else see the irony in flocking to U.S. Treasuries at a time when America’s economy is crumbling?

It made sense to buy these bonds when financial markets collapsed in 2008. The West was in the middle of the Great Recession and no one knew where to turn, so they looked to the 20th-century’s economic powerhouse. The same was true when the European sovereign debt crisis first exploded last spring.

But this time around, can you really justify buying U.S. Treasuries? U.S. government debt has been downgraded, Congress appears unable to enact the major spending cuts and revenue increases that are needed to get the country’s balance sheet in order, and the last five presidents have all racked up more debt, proving that no one is really adamant about fixing the problem.

(If you haven’t seen the graphic the New York Times put together that tracks where the country’s debt comes from, you should check it out. Forget the argument of which presidents added the most burden, what’s key is that every single president dating back to 1980 has run a deficit during his term in office.)

Don’t get me wrong. It’s easy to understand why people are turning to U.S. Treasuries right now. The U.S. has been a historical safe haven for investors and, in times of panic, people revert to something they think they can trust.

Yet that is the crucial question. Can you really trust the U.S. government to get out of its financial hole?

At the current rate of spending and revenue generation, it simply can’t happen. Beyond that, there’s the deeper issue of whether the U.S. has the will to change. Over in Europe, the so-called bond vigilantes have trashed government bonds in countries like Greece and Italy, forcing leaders to get their houses in order. No one is doing that south of the border. If investors keep piling into U.S. Treasuries, Congress won’t get the message that something needs to be done. They can continue hiding behind the veil of being the world’s leading economy. That’s problematic because it is the very definition of moral hazard. The U.S. can sit smug as a bug and refuse to do anything because its government debt is insulated from the crisis.

Yet with all that in mind, the appropriate question to ask in a rebuttal is whether investors have anywhere else to turn. China and Japan are the biggest government buyers of U.S. Treasuries, and they need somewhere, anywhere, to park their cash. Sure they could buy up Canadian, Swiss and Australian bonds, but these markets simply aren’t big enough to match their appetite.

Looking at the larger countries, Japan has been in a rut for decades and Europe is on the verge of collapse. That sorts the options as follows: investors can either earn almost nonthing in Japanese bonds, a much higher rate in Europe, but risk the chance of either default or suffering through drawn out restructurings, or they can earn a lower yield in the U.S. and simply hope that this economy recovers much faster than Japan’s and Europe’s.

For now, investors are holding their breath and opting for the third course of action. But they have to hope that they aren’t fuelling their own demise, because the U.S. simply can’t continue to spend money it doesn’t have. So far in this crisis, the market is the only force that has been able to convince governments of that fact.