skysleuth

The Reagan Counterrevolution

In your book Crash Proof you called only one thing correct, which was the collapse of the real estate market. Pretty much everything else you were wrong. There was no-decoupling between emerging markets and the US economy. The whole world was addicted to our spending. Now that we are spent out a world wide recession is occurring. Obama has assembled a pretty good team of economic advisors to include Paul Volker. Hopefully, a more balanced economy will emerge that won't be so heavily tilted toward consumption. It is easy to say just let everything collapse and let a stronger economy emerge from the ruins when you know you have plenty of money saved up to ride it out. Many people aren't so fortunate.

The Party Is Over: The Crisis We Borrowed & Spent Our Way Into

Peter,

I read Crash Proof back in December and thoroughly enjoyed it. I promptly put your advice to work and got my investments out of the dollar into non-denominated assets such as foreign funds, commodities and gold. Well needless to say my investments were hammered. I would have been better off selling all my stocks and putting it all in cash in the dollar! The only argument in your book that I had trouble swallowing was that emerging markets were going to be able de-couple from the US. I think it is well proven that at this point the de-coupling theory is dead. Foreign stocks are failing worse than US stocks. The dollar is surging at the expense of most other currencies except the Yen. It's not that I disagree with your premise because your arguments are logical and make sense, they just haven't materialized. All countries are making a coordinated effort to print more money to unfreeze the credit markets, not just the US. I have no idea how this will end up for the US and the dollar. Maybe in the end you will be proven correct.