To respond above:
1. Wall Street HAS NOT devalued assets connected to real property. FASB changed the mark to market rules last year. MBS, along w/ non performing HELOC's. These things are still valued at 90 to 100 cents on the dollar. If you know anything about the mortgage industry you will know that when a house is foreclosed on, the 1st lien holder gets paid off completely before any money goes to the 2nd lien holder. In the case of all these houses bought in the bubble, with 2nd lien helocs, now no payment made in 1+ year...the value of the home has dropped and will never recover...if they foreclose on these houses they will never recover the entire 1st lien, and therefore they will get ZERO for the HELOC. WFC is said to have $1.7T in off balance sheet accounting for this type of thing. Don't even get me started on CRE.
2. How do you believe the American economy is the strongest in the world? If it were not for the $ being the worlds reserve currency, the US would be screwed. Do you look at data such as deficits, exports, imports, bond auctions, debt rollover, debt to gdp?
3. Of course every country in the world will feel the effects of the American economy collapsing. It is a global economy. Every country feels the effects of every other country. That is why this economic fraud has continued for the past year...the powers that be are trying everything they can to keep it going, yet they are only kicking the can down the road. There is mathematical evidence that it will not continue, and those facts simply cannot logically be disputed.
4. Where do you come up with "Everyone else is putting their money on us, why don't we?" Who exactly is everyone? It is certainly not China - have you followed the action w/ their treasury holdings for the past 6 months? Its certainly not India or Japan. Do you understand the intrinsic value of gold? Do you understand people flock to gold because throughout thousands of years it is the safest store of value of wealth in bad times? Have you followed gold and its buyers over the last year? Do you follow USA bond auctions? Clearly you do not, as you would not make the above statement if you did.
I don't know how you come to your conclusions. I have reached my conclusion from thousands of hours analyzing, learning, reading, daily market watching, etc of the mortgage industry, stock market, currency market, oil, PM's, economics, and just about anything else.
If you are a true believer, then go long US treasuries, dow jones, and S&P 500. Let me know how that works out for you.
AUD - 81, BEC - 74, 80, FAR - 82, REG - 81
Done!