Crony Capitalism

Yes if you go early you can but someone eventually some levels up will have to re sell it to someone else or wait for people to pay life mortgages...that is how it will collapse...as soon you and everybody else starts to run to withdraw your investment because economy is starting to contract again the all thing comes down hard...

more:
...if the US or Europe collapses the all world goes down...there is no coin in the world will be worth ****...buy property, (not houses) gold and the likes if you want to save some...

It's much harder to get mortgage loans today than when the bubble burst in 2008. There are always buyers and sellers in the market, because when the markets swing one way too long, speculators will buy/sell to make money. That's a natural leveling effect of the stock market, because many people do not believe in gold as an investment.

The cost/price ratio of stocks is about 14/1; not bad when one considers the fact that bonds aren't paying enough to keep up with inflation.

Most tend to keep their investments at the recommended ratios between stocks and bonds based on age as a holy grail. I don't follow that rule, because I believe our economy is strong enough to continue to grow, and returns will be much better with a higher equities/bond ratio - even at my age.

My over-all timing on the stock market has been pretty good - even looking back ten years. In 2008, my wife and I lost a little over 10% while the majority loss 40%. I've already withdrawn more from my investments than I have put into it, and it's still at a comfortable level - at our age. It's much higher than the averages when looked at by age groups.

Finally, you wrote, . True, but if it doesn't, I'm going to ride it to higher levels.
Fear mongering isn't in my blood.

I have faith in America.

I appreciate an intrepid attitude CI...if you can ride it and get out on time good for you...but that won't change what I said one dime...

PS - My remark on gold and farms was framed in the context of imminent collapse...

That's the thing; I'm putting my dime where my mouth is! LOL

Fil, I think you'll find this article interesting - about national debt.

http://news.yahoo.com/student-took-eminent-economists-debt-issue-won-095347790--business.html

It doesn't take a PHD to understand debt always causes growth to slowdown, unless of course you don't intend to pay it and rather invest on stimulating the economy, you can't have money for both if your borrowing in the first place...the significance of the mistake might be relevant for financial engineering on how data is manipulated, because data manipulation is central to financial success specially in our present condition, but the bottom line underlying problem stands.

You wrote,

But that's not the case with the US; our debt to GDP ratio is getting smaller.
"don't intend to pay it" is a struggle for the US, but the GOP is hell bent to make sure spending continues to get cut. The problem is that they want Obama to do more cutting without any new revenues.

They're both fighting the wrong battle; even most Americans understand that there needs to be a balance between cutting spending and increase revenue.

Congress is broken.

I am no economist, not by far, but this is my interpretation :

The new international bubble if lasting long enough might get the US partially out of trouble while exportation's get to grow and having a market in the global economy (to an extent)...that is to say you guys artificially might reverse it for a while as long the party goes elsewhere which in turn means more debts to those country's buying the stuff, as they raise credit debt upon debt to keep the train going...but as everybody is buying from everybody the commercial balance between export import won't make much a difference...but even if some country's got to have a significant upper hand, the problem is so big worldwide that their recuperation could only be done at the expense of augmenting debt worldwide and thus eventually be dragged down by any other regional collapse elsewhere, say Europe or Asia...my point being a solution for a global problem must be global to, but you can't make debt go way if debt is there already and will take generations to solve...Anyways I strongly doubt real economy world wide is big enough and strong enough to absorb the impact of an huge amount of debt build on credit and speculation by the financial system...It wasn't in 2008 as we've run deeper into debt to avoid the collapse then, it can't be now that the overall debt as grown yet more...

What is interesting about the international bubble is that almost all developed countries have some debt. According to the Economist, there is no evidence to show that national debt depresses the economy; none.

Japan's population is 127,000+, but remains the third largest economy in the world. Their national debt is 200 X's their gdp. According to some latest news reports, financial pundits are saying Japan's economy will improve dramatically this year.

So, where's the beef?