4 ms·

I'm not unbiased enough to decide if some other country would be a better bet than the U.S. Still, I suspect the top outside choices would be India and Japan,

by amalcon 17y ago

I'm not unbiased enough to decide if some other country would be a better bet than the U.S. Still, I suspect the top outside choices would be India and Japan, in that order. Japan is miles ahead of the rest of the world in robotics, which means that if the price of Chinese labor ever increases, they own manufacturing. They still have a piece of the pie, even with rock-bottom labor prices, which says something. India is even more interesting because there are a lot of educated people, but still very low living costs. Early America is the last time there's been a combination like that.

biznerd 17y ago
Japan is horribly indebted because of their lost decade. Public debt is headed to 200% of GDP this year. http://blogs.reuters.com/japan/2009/11/14/japans-bulging-debt/ http://blogs.reuters.com/japan/2009/11/14/japans-bulging-deb... It's credit rating is ranked lower than Botswana: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/japan-falls-below-botswana-and-estonia-in-league-table-of-credit-worthiness-644193.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/japan-falls-...
mynameishere 17y ago
Here are the yields on Japanese Bonds http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/japan.html http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/japan.html 2.2 percent on a 30 year bond, which means that the maximum upside on the principal is roughly 20 percent. So, a 10K investment could theoretically rise to 12K if the 30 year yield drops to 0, which it won't. If it rises to something sensible, like 6 or 8 percent, you take a bath. People seem to think of bonds like they do savings accounts, but they aren't. There's a huge principal risk. And government debt always seems "off" to me. For instance, Japanese debt is largely held by the Japanese themselves, for patriotic reasons sometimes. This distorts the market.

by amalcon 17y ago

biznerd 17y ago

Japan is horribly indebted because of their lost decade. Public debt is headed to 200% of GDP this year. http://blogs.reuters.com/japan/2009/11/14/japans-bulging-debt/ http://blogs.reuters.com/japan/2009/11/14/japans-bulging-deb... It's credit rating is ranked lower than Botswana: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/japan-falls-below-botswana-and-estonia-in-league-table-of-credit-worthiness-644193.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/japan-falls-...

mynameishere 17y ago

Here are the yields on Japanese Bonds http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/japan.html http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/japan.html 2.2 percent on a 30 year bond, which means that the maximum upside on the principal is roughly 20 percent. So, a 10K investment could theoretically rise to 12K if the 30 year yield drops to 0, which it won't. If it rises to something sensible, like 6 or 8 percent, you take a bath. People seem to think of bonds like they do savings accounts, but they aren't. There's a huge principal risk. And government debt always seems "off" to me. For instance, Japanese debt is largely held by the Japanese themselves, for patriotic reasons sometimes. This distorts the market.