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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (49749)	4/17/2006 1:01:45 PM
From: shades	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

and ultimately self-preserving I thought they were facing entitlement issues for aging people like everywhere else in the globe. Tax man gonna come for you no matter where you try to hide eh? Like monty python in life of brian - RUN AWAY - RUN AWAY - the bunny is gonna get you! haha! Never put all your eggs in one basket General - diversification always worked for me! spectator.org France is roiled by corruption, racially tinged riots, and protests by whiny students and young "workers" that make obnoxious President Jacques Chirac back down from the economic reforms that are just about the only good thing he has tried in years. Italy's elections resulted in a basically unworkable standoff that has hobbled (and probably deposed) the strong American ally, Silvio Berlusconi. Germany's government also is so split between coalitions of the left and right that it is all but paralyzed. All three nations are mired in stagnation and unemployment exacerbated by huge, sclerotic, and unwieldy national bureaucracies and other ills of rampant nanny-statism. And Spain already turned turtle after one bout of terrorism. Even in the stalwart United Kingdom, American friend Tony Blair will step down at some point to be replaced by far more leftish leaders of his Labour Party, while the Tories leave Thatcherite principles farther and farther behind in a cynical pursuit of an "us-too" strategy that adopts more and more of the statist and culturally leftist tropes of the Labourites. Castro still reigns in Cuba, and has announced plans to drill for oil 45 miles off the American coast. The hard-left troublemaker Chavez still makes trouble from Venezuela. Iran gets closer and closer to being nuclearly weaponized. North Korea, also probably nuclear armed, lurks in the East. And Russia becomes ever more autocratic (and dangerous) under the iron hand of the man into whose soul President Bush supposedly saw, a soul Mr. Bush pronounced good and "trustworthy." Yet with so much of the rest of the world increasingly proving itself venal and dangerous, a majority of the United States Supreme Court here at home picks and chooses from among foreign laws and foreign court decisions to impose supposedly "evolving standards of decency" on Americans while claiming to protect some sort of tommyrot connected to the "sweet mystery of life," or words very much to that effect. Yet private property rights, the very basis of the social compact, are stripped by the same high court in the name of state-sponsored "economic development" that enriches already wealthy business interests... OKAY, ENOUGH ALREADY. As odd as it may sound, there is one possible development that could do so much to upend all these bad trends, and to regain the moral and political high ground for the good guys, so that the entire, downwardly spiraling spirit of the age escapes its doomed track and starts ascending to new heights of freedom and prosperity. (Please forgive all the cliches. They happen to say the right things in this case.) Win in Iraq, demonstrably and definitively, and the United States will be vindicated, as will, in domestic politics, the administration that fumbled and stumbled but never lost its will or its admirable aims. And victory over the terrorists in Iraq, a victory for republican government every bit as lasting as the ones post-World War II in West Germany and Japan, is indeed still possible. A government is on the verge of being stabilized there. The terrorists are ever more desperate, and by some reports running out of weapons materiel. The good guys -- the Americans and our allies -- can win this thing. And silence the critics. And strike a mighty blow for freedom. In this Easter week, all our eggs are in that rickety basket. All the more reason for us to redouble our efforts to make sure the basket doesn't fail. Right now there's no specially good reason for optimism anywhere in the public sphere. But steadfastness and courage -- and sheer, cussed insistence on seeing a principled commitment through to the end -- can survive even where optimism falters. Churchill once offered blood, toil, tears and sweat. Grimly, we conservatives can do no less.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (49749)	4/17/2006 1:53:57 PM
From: Riskmgmt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Jay a bunch of us in hk thought berlin cheap on relative basis figured the germans to be conservative and astute, and ultimately self-preserving and we need to unload cash into non-usd and positive carry space in law abiding country I can not help on berlin, never been there. However I was in Germany and Austria not too long ago and was most impressed with Munich. I considered looking for some Real Estate investments there. I have a friend that lives and owns several business's in Munich. He thought something along the lines of what you were invested in before in H.K. would be good. PM me if you want more info. Ray