Gold Drops To 4-1/2-Month Low On Euro Zone Worries

The taxpayer is the backstop, every time.

This whole thing and the reasons given for it sound really fishy to me. Yes, Europe is in a lot of trouble these days and lots of Europeans are looking at the euro and wondering if it will survive. Jumping out of the euro and into the US dollar looks a lot to me like jumping from the fire to the frying pay. You still get cooked but it just takes a little longer. The end result is the same, however.

I find it fascinating that the US is seen as a "safe haven". It's not. The US is in just as much financial trouble today as is Europe. The one and only thing that the US has going for it that Europe does not is that the US dollar is the World Reserve Currency (WRC). Because of this unique status, we can do some things in the financial realm that other countries cannot. For one thing, we can settle all our international trade debts in our own currency without having to first convert it into US dollars.

US Treasury paper is a terrible investment now, yet people continue to buy it. This is likely due to the inertia of professional money managers and financial advisers. Buying an investment that guarantees a return that is less than the official, let alone the real, rate of inflation is not good planning IMHO.

Using basic stock evaluation techniques, it is possible to analyze nations to see if you would buy its stock if it was a company instead of a country. I find that on doing this, I would not buy Europe, the US, or Japan. I expect these countries to continue printing money, borrowing money, and spending more money than they have. I do not expect their productivity to increase in the foreseeable future. I would buy Canada, Norway, Denmark, Australia, and Korea and for just the opposite reasons as given above.

The printing presses isn't going fast enough the way our government spends it.

What working and middle classes? A few more years of this and we will have serfs and aristocracy. :-/