Hello EnergyPlay,
Your post was useful. So it appears that the official savings rate doesn't take account of capital gains. And no guess at the size of the underground economy. Also the credit balances of credit cards include non-interest incurring debts, which is also a distortion. So the negative factors are not quite as bad as I, for one, thought.
However there remain some enormous problems, e.g. the balance of payments. Even Buffett has remarked on this and commented that the U.S. dollar must decline w.r.t. other currencies. That is certainly happening. The best investments, other things being equal are in countries the currency of which is appreciating w.r.t. other currencies, such as Japan in the period from 1969-1995, or Canada in the last year. China in the future? That's a strong factor.
The huge deficits of various levels of government are a reality. A low tax(alias probusiness) administration is in power. So the budget is unbalanced. Thus the seeds of inflation are being sown. That's real.
Worst of all, the U.S. government is taking on all enemies of the state of Israel, as if they were automatically then enemies of the U.S. There were barely enough cash resources to do a good job in Afghanistan. It would have taken decades but a grand success was possible, training enough Afghans in everything. The administration decided that they would in addition fight Saddam. and everyone else who hates the state of Israel. You might say that it's not Israel that they are protecting but Middle East oil. It seems to turn out, according to informants, in two great posts that have appeared on this thread, that there's not that much middle east oil left to protect or grab as the case may be. In short this is a stupid administration, wasting trillions of dollars and destroying thousands of lives. It's hard enough to get by in this world if you're smart. This president can't even pronounce his native tongue correctly.
I'm never short any stock, but my conclusion about the above despite your emendations, is that it's safer to invest outside of the US than inside of it.
That surely wasn't always true. It's unfortunate. |
