Timothy Geithner has been in China the past week trying to shore up confidence in the US dollar with key figures in the Chinese government.

While he has been over CNBC and the mainstream financial press has been fawning over him. But in their reporting they have been blacking out the many critical remarks coming from the Chinese press and events that just plain make him look silly.

Yesterday the Chinese state newspaper warned the US that it may no longer just blindly buy Treasury bonds anymore:

"Ordinary Chinese people are discontent with the declining value of China's huge foreign exchange reserves denominated in US dollars. The reserve holdings have been the fruit of China's 30-year sustained economic growth... How to maintain and enhance the value of these holdings is a common concern of China's ordinary people. It will be regrettable if (Geithner) underestimates and shuts his ears to voices from China's civil society."

The front page of China's official economic daily read "Three questions for US Treasury Secretary Geithner. How big will the United States allow its fiscal deficit to become? How do you propose implementing fiscal discipline? How will you maintain the stability of the dollar after the crisis?"

Indeed Americans are wondering the same thing. By placing treasury bonds at artificially low rates for years the Federal Reserve forced investors to speculate in real estate to try to make money and now in a zero interest rate market investors are being forced to buy stocks with stock trading strategies that ignore fundamentals.

Some investors are flocking into gold stocks for an alternative or are buying the precious metals itself while commodities appear to have built a floor.

The situation is almost shameful. Yesterday Geithner responded to a question at Peking University after a speech he gave about the treasury bonds by saying that the Chinese investments in them "are very safe."

The answer drew laughter from the audience.