Building a Highway to Job Creation

I hope that as the government goes about spreading taxpayer money everywhere, it does something intelligent - like spending money to rebuild our infrastructure (roads, bridges, ports, etc.), and perhaps undertaking the task of stimulating alternative energy resources (while also building plenty of nuclear-power plants), so we can create jobs and eliminate our dependence on entities like OPEC.

I'm sure there will be other ideas about how best to help create jobs, but one "solution" -- which is no solution at all -- is to put a floor on house prices. House prices in America are still too high, relative to average income, and the average income is going down. So trying to "stabilize" house prices is (a) impossible and (b) a complete waste of money.

The third crisis that I see coming, which is more theoretical but I suspect cannot be avoided: At some point, the US won’t be allowed to finance all of its debts in dollars. We have proposed more than $1 trillion worth of bailouts, and there will be more money thrown at the economy, I'm sure.

I can't see why foreigners will fund a couple trillion dollars in spending in our currency, given our recent behavior. Thus, somewhere down the road, we'll have to borrow in foreign currencies, which will cause another set of problems. Hopefully, we'll be far enough along in the first 2 crises so that this won't be a catastrophe, should it come to pass.

To sum up in baseball metaphors: I believe the credit crisis is probably in the eighth inning. The economic crisis is still doing batting practice. As far as the funding crisis goes, I don't think folks have realized that the game has even been scheduled.

Obviously, there are many things that I can't know, and there will certainly be surprises in the dark matter of the world's financial institutions. Any market rally is almost certain to be transitory. And, while it may be tradable (depending on the setup and the skills of individuals), it won’t be something you can buy and forget about.