in january 2008 I had the pleasure to have a 2 hours talk/discussion with the chief of investments of a highly reputated private Bank in Hamburg.
This was the only time where in my complete experience with banks and investment advisories that my opponent told the complete truth..... his final statement was:" in this situation, there is nothing we can do for you!"
"this situation" you can understand as the view of economical downturn, collaps of trust in institutions and authorities, the foreseing that it could come to a complete collaps of our traditional economical framework, and back to original real values like land, houses, factories, commodities, WORK, knowledge, skills.... and not just blown up intellectual windcastles..... in Autumn 2008 we had the collaps of Lehman Brothers and AIG, later Hypo Real Estate in Germany.... and politicains have fought ever since to avoid further downturn by pumping liquidity into the markets.... QE1, QE2.... UK, Germany, France... so on. the collapse was not complete, we saw signs of it only. The socalles "freepress" was ask by the German Chansellor NOT to report in a way to inflame panic, succesfully as we see today. The informations you can read in your daily newspaper are filtered, for profit, sensations, sell most issues. TOO BIG TO FAIL... does not excist, the only long term consequence will be that the complete system will FAIL. To file for bankrupcy is a matter of preventing against more damage for the whole system!...

when we have no debts...... there can be no debtcrisis!!! A Ugandan Bank of Devellopment chief told me.... Ugandans is one of the most solid people...... very poor people, but they have no debt.... so basical have payed for what they own.

when I have payed my goods cash i do not consume in advance, and the summ of consumption over a lifetime can be bigger, BUT delayed!

The western countries exported a lot of production capacity to gain shorttermed profit, on cost of environment directly, and over time on cost of skilled labourforce and experince which will be lacking the experince in future to produce/work. The greeddiness you can watch in any sector of the economy, callcenters are placed in low wage countries, Productions sites are moved to more cheap areas. The shareholders value principle giving higer salaries to managers deping on the expectations to the future ( Stocks value ) and that is very tempting to do shortterm horizons, and overestimate the positive parameters.

Untill today there was no real cleaning up, politicians will avoid untill the last, but I see no other option than the western world will loose a great bit of prosperity, and the emerging markets will continue to grow. Who do not produce cannot comsume!

take alook at this interview with Jim Rogers.... for my oppinion he brings many good basical points... 1:45, 3:40, 7:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73631944/

my personal view: I do not hope that there wil be a collaps more heavy than we already had, BUT I do really see no attempts to stop it, is like covering the dirt under the carpet. No politicians seem to admit the serioucity, to avoid panic, but the reality will be uncovered, and the longer it takes, the more heavy the impact will be!!

Have a great day.... and keep your cameras ready for the next upcomming turmoils ;-)

Kurt