Economic data on the health of middle class earnings shows Reagan killed the middle class and Bush Jr. and his republican congress put the nail in the coffin. republicans and corporate democrats are destroying America. Anyone who states otherwise is part of the problem.
All 3 can be summarized into one. Monetarization of the Federal Deficit. Monetary expansion tends to -lower interest rates -the value of the currency declines -we have to pay for the massive Federal debt with higher taxes.
From a macro perspective or academic perspective probably yes, I haven't a clue. I do have a clue on one aspect though. I could put an ad in the paper and create 2-3 jobs in a week but I don't and won't because it's a dead end prospect. I'm not interested in being a cash churner for the IRS, the insurance co or why bother to risk a dime when you can get sued for anything or deal with dozens of ways to get fined that you've never dreamed of, or beaucratic gov't bs. Been there, done that. Too many gov't policies got their hand out between you and your customer.
Correctamundo! To attract capital and jobs to the USA, America needs "business and tax friendly" policies. Unfortunately, our policies are getting less "business friendly" all the time.... and our future looks grim...
I should throw in my opinion on the internet business. It reminds me of the sub prime fiasco, cdo's mbs derivaitives, moodys would be the equivalent of a search engine lol, the whole kit and kaboodle of incestious buying and selling of on line crap to one another in the internet business. What a joke. Of course this displays my ignorance of the "new" economy.
Did you look at the performance since the peak of the market Oct 2007? There was no "massive decoupling" to speak of so far. All the markets you list above rallied a lot form the March bottom, but they also dropped a lot farther from their 2007 highs percentage wise. The SP500 has actually OUTPERFORMED developed markets in USD terms:
I don't think a low dollar policy is necessarily that bad. It only hurts people that make dollars and have to spend euros or americans that travel to Europe. The people who get hurt by low dollar high euro policy are countries like Germany or France. Who is going to buy german products or other european companies that make world products, no one will pay up for that when they can buy American cheap. Also it hurts them because people are not as likely to travel and spend money in those countries where everything costs 1.5x more. Just my opinion.
If the "Strong currency = best basis for jobs and economic growth" thesis was correct then soon Spain, Portugal, Italy Greece and Ireland will be economic powerhouses. Is capital flowing to Spain? To Portugal? To Ireland? Because of the strong Euro?