dsrtwriter

How to Participate in the Asset Bubble Safely

I agree that for low risk tolerance, the suggested portfolio of the late Harry Browne is a good option. I would only say that a large portion of the cash should be in currencies other than the U.S. dollar.That is for long term, not worrying about a dollar resurgence and a paper "loss" as a result of holding Can dollars, SFs, Aussie dollars, etc..
Same goes for the commodity based currencies, such as Can,. and Aussie; if commodities drop, these will drop in tandem, but fundamentally they represent a more "real" resource based economy.

In contrast, the U.S. dollar does not represent any known long surviving economy. Manufacturing has been largely lost to overseas for many reasons. Ironically, China has grown rapidly while violating most of the economists' tenets of the merits of "free trade". We have done the opposite. Obama is for the unions, he has hired economists who are Keynsians, and the U.S. dollar will pay the price.

In fact, apart from confiscatory taxation, Obama and friends can only achieve a mission of income redistribution by destroying the dollar. After all, who has dollars? Working middle class and of course the "rich" (maybe).

So I would say, of the 25 percent allocated to cash, I would go:

ten percent Canadian/Aussie dollar (I prefer Canadian)
ten percent Swiss franc or Euro
five percent U.S. dollars

Is the Party Over for Commodity Stocks?

Commodities including gold will remain a hedge component of the portfolio. If they drop a lot that would be a great time to overweight them,for inflation will re-emerge, just when we think it will not.

When we think inflation is near term, then that is the time to worry about commodities.

Is Corn Headed for Zero?

While I sympathize with the farmers' plight, all jobs in this country have risks,and many have no subsidies when times are tough.

The silver lining here may be that hopefully this will destroy the stupid ethanol fuel substitute plan and we can move on to using corn as food and feed only, and extracting the natural gas which can power our trucking industry as a start.Trucking accounts for 1/3 of imported foreign oil.