Here is an excert from the Van Tharp new letter. Very bearish everything US and Bullish everything else.
Part I: Van's Commentary?The Big Picture
I thought I?d just make a few comments on what is going on in the United States. It?s election week. The media says that the markets will go up if Republicans take over Congress. However, six corporations now control the U.S. Media and thus dominate the news and entertainment field and Americans now watch 153 hours of television per month. With a 40 hour workweek, they should be working about 180 hours each month. That?s almost a ratio of one hour of television to one hour of work. Perhaps some watch television at work. That?s pretty productive.
Almost no Americans are aware of the study published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve in 2006 that says the U.S. is bankrupt. If you are aware of this study, it?s probably because of your association with the Van Tharp Institute. How many of the following ten points are you aware of, if any?
1. The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation. (Source: The American Prospect)
2. The United States once had the highest proportion of young adults with post-secondary degrees in the world. Today, the U.S. has fallen to 12th. We still have strong universities, however, the top students tend to be foreigners. Once they graduate, the United States makes it very difficult for them to stay here. Canada has almost exactly the opposite policy: if you get an education in Canada, you are encouraged to stay in the country and become a productive Canadian citizen.
3. In America today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services. (Source: Economy in Crisis)
4. The television manufacturing industry began in the United States. So how many televisions are manufactured in the United States today? According to Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder, the grand total is zero.
5. If our trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone. (Source: Economic Policy Institute [PDF])
6. In the 2009 "prosperity index" published by the Legatum Institute, the United States was ranked as just the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That was down five places from 2008. For many years the US was number one.
7. International job growth from 1999 to 2008, employment at the foreign affiliates of US parent companies, increased an astounding thirty percent to 10.1 million. Here is what actually happened:
International Job Growth = 30% to 10.1M = 233K Jobs Domestic Job Cuts = 8% decline from 21.1M = 184K Cuts Net Growth = 233K ? 184K = 49K Net Percentage Growth = 49/(10.1M + 21.1M) = 0.16% Employment Growth. (Source: Tax Analysts [PDF])
8. The Census Bureau says 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty, which is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept. (Source: Washington Post)
9. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power. And Ron Paul, one of the few people who comments accurately on these things, was unable to convince the US Congress to audit the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has nothing to do with the U.S. Government. Even though it prints our money, it is a privately owned institution. And the policy of the people who created it was ?let?s make sure we have a strong two party political system where everyone argues over trivial things and pays zero attention to what is happening to their wealth/money.?
10. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.
These ?facts? were listed among 35 in ?Currency Wars? an article written by Gordon Long. They are his ?facts? but I included only ten that fit with my experience of what is going on.
As you will see in this update, now is a pretty good time to be fully invested?just not in the US, with the dollar?s decline. The NASDQ 100 is up 16% so far this year and the U.S. dollar is down 18% since July.
(20min delay)