Sounds like a plan and makes a lot of sense to me... Speaking of productive assets, I am hearing that condos in Miami are still pretty cheap.
debt spending and capitalism are related. you are just playing with words. the US just showed it is military might to hong kong. they refused to hand snowden over per US request. let's see how the russians play their hand.
This quality of life thingy, it's not best measured in economic terms. Quality of air/food/relationships under pure capitalism? Forgetaboutit, it's horrible typically.
Hard assets keep pace (and usually outperform) inflation, ya? If it's a race to the bottom, currency-wise, then that's pretty much the best trade - diversified real estate, commodities, and a basket of global "blue chip" equities, imo
Ah, finally, an easy question ... I dunno, mate, we're in a tough spot with all sorts of crazy stuff happening. We're facing a LOT of unknown unknowns in the Eurozone, Japan and China. My optimistic central scenario is that these places will have to go through a long process of readjustment (each has its own issues), as the various excesses are worked through and losses are distributed through the different participants. Their rates will have to remain low for long and maybe they will have to do non-standard stuff like QE. During this time US should probably do OK and bumble along with marginally higher rates (low by historical standards, but high by world ones). Obviously, there are massive uncertainties around this central scenario. Japan could have a disorderly accident; Chinese attempts at rebalancing could derail the whole world, including the US; Eurozone could blow apart; appreciation of USD can be too much and end up killing what good news there is coming from the US; etc etc. It's a bit of a mess, but then that's life, innit?
I might be. And yes, could be that euro will strengthen, unless, of course, the European countries not printing money means there ain't no euro no more, in which case it will weaken. Which way this cookie crumbles, I dunno...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-snowden-diplomacy-20130628,0,6272074.story where are the US jet scrambling into action against Russia and china? real tough obama is resorting to diplomacy after making unsubstantiated. let's hear some more about american might. more likely the US is making threats against little Ecuador