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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Adams who wrote (2639)	11/25/2003 10:21:25 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Put a halt to all purchasing of US Bonds, Stocks, Land, Buildings and anything else by non domestic citizens. They can ship us all the tv's and bra's they like, but they'll have to trade the dollars they get in exchange for something from someone else, not invest them here. Good lord. Instant depression M

To: Mark Adams who wrote (2639)	11/26/2003 10:03:08 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

I say install import restrictions on foreign investment. That strategy worked so well for the formerly Communist countries and is one of the reasons they have such a competitively low cost of labor and low standard of living. In fact if you look around to those countries which had limited both imports and foreign investment you'll see that they are the poorest countries.

To: Mark Adams who wrote (2639)	11/26/2003 10:33:26 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

This particular article merely reinforces a message the topic of several fed speeches (one by Poole discussed earlier on this thread, one more recent by Greenspan). That there are two sides to the trade deficit story. Poole's way of looking at it is so confused, it is hard to even have a discussion. it is like saying a crack addict takes drugs simply because the dealer wants his money. after all, it is a two-way street: maybe the crack addict just feels sorry for the dealer who is so "addicted" to the crack addict's great money, so that is why he takes crack. if you were trying to have a discussion about the Crack Problem and somebody brought up this "side" of the Crack Story, where do you go with the discussion. verily, it is an Intellectual Gobstopper. the US consumer is a crack addict addicted to spending more than he earns; a difference which at the macro level is realized flowwise in the form of our 5% C/A deficit, and which accumulates stockwise in the form of our ever-declining net international investment position. these things are clearly of a concern to people like Buffett and Templeton, even if they are of no concern of such Intellectual Giants as Poole and Baum. even a cursory understanding of the mercantilist policies employed by Japan and others with structural C/A surpluses explodes the myths which are so cynically espoused by our Economic Leaders. re Ms. Baum, I find it interesting that those of a bearish bent happily cited her material in support of their positions '01/02 (ie on the CFZ thread) yet now that she's singing a differing pitch, she's 'swallowed a dumb pill'. in my humble opinion, the lumping together of disparate people and opinions and temporalities into a nebulous miasmic impression is not particularly interesting. but i guess differences of opinion are "what makes the market", eh? it seems obvious to me that there is a pecking order in financial writing. most of the people who are actually intelligent become freelance writers (like Roger Lowenstein, who used to write for the WSJ but was too talented, so he started writing books), analysts or write for pay-per-view publications (like Grant, who used to write for Barron's but was too talented, so he started writing books and charging $740 a year for his newsletter). it is interesting to look at a publication like Slate.com, where they have some fairly intelligent commentary on various and sundry political and cultural issues, but their financial commentary is absolutely pathetic (except if one reads for the purpose of Humor). (actually, Surowiecki was a good writer for them, but he went a bit upmarket to the New Yorker.) this is why i have a personal annual budget of $5000 for financial research. i only wish it could be $50,000, but i believe 5K is much better than zero. sure, i would rather spend that money on a Big Screen TV or an extra Trip To Maui or give it to the Poor Tibetan Refugees or Something, but if that meant relying on mainstream journalists for a semblance of understanding, my portfolio would be Doomed. most of the mainstream stuff that is free is absolute garbage in my humble opinion. the exceptions (which one hesitates to call "mainstream"), like Roach and Noland, are written by people who are not journalists but rather, First and Foremost, Analysts. and btw, if my annual budget were $100, i would happily spend the first $95 on ContraryInvestor.com and go see a matinee with the other five bucks. i don't know why their publication is so cheap--i consider it on par with others costing ten or twenty times as much. i believe they do it as a Good Deed.