Good to hear from you PG. Even though Musk and I disagree somewhat on this topic, I do enjoy reading him.

I can understand how my views confuse people. On the one hand, I think the USD is way undervalued, and I defend the U.S. when it comes to its currency against those buying gold, oil, or other currencies.

OTOH, I am trashing the U.S. economy, and it's possible to do both. My model is Japan post 1990. Since the Nikkei hit 40,000 in 1989, the yen is at or near an all time high versus the dollar while the Japanese economy and stock market have been in a twenty year funk.

As for the U.S. versus Latin American, I again go to the Japan example and compare Japan to China. Japan is safer, wealthier, has a better rule of law and is not as oppressive as China is. OTOH, China is growing, dynamic, and much more alive than the aged Japan.

<I agree, the pendulum is swinging back from a period in which corporate interests and the ultra-wealthy got away with shifting a huge amount of wealth and power their way. All this while the rest of America was pre-occupied with getting rich by flipping stocks or houses or cards in online poker games.>

Just like Japan, right? Propped up by government debt, there are zombie banks and corporations that were shells of what they used to be which sounds quite familiar to what we have in the U.S. today. Per Bill Gross, the wealthiest Americans were not the most productive, intelligent, or hardest working, they were the ones best able to get money from banks.

< The country has basic strengths of infa-structure, education and rule of law that some other nations can only envy.>

And again just like Japan.

<Does this mean we'll dial back to the heady stupidity-is-rewarded days of early 2007? Doubtful. But I'll take my chances that this will remain a preferable place to live whatever happens.>

We'll see on that score, PG. I've been disappointed with what Obama. The Dems and Obama do seem to be willing to stick it to the big companies in health care. We'll see how that plays out once the final health care law gets signed into being.

However, Obama has done zip with regards to financial reform. And now we find out that the person who authorized that $13 billion to Goldman Sachs via the AIG bailout was (drum roll please) our beloved Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner. See the link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2...

So we now know that Goldman Sachs not only had the previous SOT Hank Paulson looking out for them, they have the current one as well.

And Geithner is already busy drawing up another plot to give him even more power and money. See the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIuwVJ-Wq...

Everybody who is so enamored with Obama has to answer the following question. When it comes to the stock market, commodities market, and the way the bailout has been handled to date, how has Obama differed in any way from Bush?