Ben Bernanke, your own personal jesus. Maybe benny can stop world hunger, stop and cure epidemics, and hell, buy us all houses, give us free education, free food, and anything we could ever possibly want with his printing press? Marx had a beard too. The money is free, not backed by gold, backed on our faith and credit, so,, why the hell not? Why keep the equity and housing markets up? Some of you fail to realize that market lows are wonderful and provide lots of opportunities to exploit and make lots of money. Shorting stock is not that hard and if you dont like the risk you can buy the put option. I was a major bear over the last few years but now that the lows have been taken out I am waiting for my signal to make some short term profits on the buyside. I trade mainly metals and mining companies and until we have that nice pullback I am looking for I will not be that quick to jump back in. Would you rather buy two properties for 1M with a possibility of making 20% on your investment, or a string of distressed properties for the same amount with a possibilty of doubling your money within the same time frame? Some may say it is unpatriotic for someone to want corrections and recessions and price declines, but this isnt communism. Market manipulation through regulation of interest rates is communism to the detriment of the average american who has not the slightest clue what an "option" is. Depressions and recessions are a part of america. After every depression new wealth is created, as are new people with money. I say let the market and its participants decide. Enough corruption through manipulation. We criticize other economies for price regulation and we are doing what exectly?
Marc Faber, James Rogers, George Soros, Chris and Jim Puplava. Peter isnt the only one. I am sure there is more, they are not telivised though.
Going 100% foreign currencies would actually be a very risky play. After all, your next few decades of lifetime expenses are all in dollars. If you are wrong and the dollar goes up 50% in 5 years, you are totally fucked. I have the same issue now with FX. With the £ at 2.11 to the dollar recently, I was sorely tempted to put my entire net worth into the greenback. But really that would be very risky. My taxes are in £, so are my real estate liabilities, champagne/beer money, and other essentials. Basically any position in your home currency cannot truly be "hedged" against a decline in that currency without taking insane risk. I have settled for buying some GBP puts, so that below around 2.05 I can exercise into dollars...but even then I paid a fair premium and this only lasts until part way into 2008. If the dollar has fallen 35-40%, that's not so bad because your bills have fallen 35-40% too (apart from inflation, which should be offset by your asset appreciation). You should only really care if you live internationally, or if you have so much surplus capital that you can think like an endowment fund. Personally if there were no such thing as options, I would put say 30-40% of my surplus capital (that above what I will spend in the next 5 years, say) into foreign currency as a hedge. Anything more and your risk of a local currency rally is just too big. As Murray Rothbard said, the pernicious thing about inflation & currency devaluation is that you can't truly hedge against them if you are a native. Sure, as foreigner I can punt vs the dollar (up until last week anyway) with only normal risk. As a US resident, you have far more risk punting against it. When the IRS ask for your taxes, you can't pay them in Aussie dollars or Euros, can you? So a 20-30% dollar spike would royally screw you over.