Scott Evil said:

Why do you think the US $ will continue to decline?

I agree that it will in the short term, but I am not to sure that the declines will continue to far into the future... As it stands, I'm almost 100% invested in the US stock markets...that is to say that I've scaled back my foreign positions because the recent returns have seemed "to good to be true" or at least to good to be sustainable (a little profit taking never hurts), and I've all but eliminated my investments in bonds because I think interest rates are at or very near a long-term bottom, so now I find myself with not much diversification other than that which comes from the different stocks themselves...

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I'm only looking at the short term. We Americans have been buying foreign goods on credit for too long. There's too much American debt in the hands of foreigners. The wisest tactic for the United States is to devalue the dollar and thus reduce the value of our foreign debt. The suckers holding our debt won't be happy about this but then "Life isn't fair". My concern is to not get burned with the suckers.

Long term, we're in better shape than the Europeans. The Europeans are screwing themselves big time with their demographics and addiction to socialism.

The Chinese are rapidly becoming the 500 lb. gorilla. However their continued ascendency is not a sure bet. They still have to wheen themselves off of communisn and transition from a developing economy into a true industrial economy without overheating (not easy). Historically, the Chinese like to "bolt out of the blue" commit economic / social suicide. They did this during the Cultural Revolution under Mao and a couple times before the communists. However China is now so big, if they opt to destroy themselves, they might take us with them. Anyway, I digress. Short term, IMHO the US dollar is a bad investment. The trick is to shift back into the US dollar before the Euro takes its eventual plunge.

Gary