Maxine: So what? Japan is the only economy and stock market in...

Maxine: So what? Japan is the only economy and stock market in the world that is an exception and different to the rest of the world.

Many countries have had property bubbles and the Swedes raised rates to 500% to prevent a run on the currency and their stock market recovered within half a decade and their system was empowered with that experience and they're doing very well now. Swedish stocks have more than doubled in the last five years, their unemployment is very low and valuations are very attractive from what I can see on Yahoo.

I don't what's with Japan and why its stock market is still struggling from 40,000 points to around 10,000. If you also look at valuations Japanese companies were always overvalued until now and their corporate transparency and low yields are not attractive for investment at all.

And anyway US stocks are pretty cheap at the moment, decade low valuations on many industrials and banks, she'll be right! But yeah as one other poster pointed out higher unemployment is a bit of a worry but hey, this is the US that we're talking about it - the whole economy is so flexible that it can turn from nightmare into nirvana in one quarter.