1. My allocation is money, munis & metals each @ 10%, mlps@30 and mutuals@40 w/60/40 split
between bonds & equities in the funds.
Germany is allergic to inflation b/c of their Weimar experience in the post-war 20's just as we
find deflation anathema due to our experience during the Great Depression.
What we are witnessing is brinkmanship (prudent or reckless?) that seeks to hold each nation's
feet to the fiscal responsibility fire as well as to maintain the ECB's credibility by not devaluing
the Euro thru too much rate reduction, quantitative easing or money printing.
There ARE worse evils than currency devaluation and inflation (many already above-listed in this
thread). Printing money IS, in the end, inevitably going to be a transfer of wealth (or, as the
Libertarians say, a tax) from lenders to debtors and from those with cash (or fixed income
streams, e.g. pensioners & entitlement recipients) to those with hard assets/commodities, often
the very same hard assets/commodities that are being used to collateralize the existing debts.
It hurts, then, the poor, the retired and the elderly ... hmmm ... the very same people on whose
behalf the sovereign debt was inordinately run up in the first place. It also hurts the lenders who
will, in the future, demand more protection (higher rates) for both the credit and interest rate
risk they're being asked to take on, assuming they're willing to lend any more to certain debtors.
(China may not like our devaluation strategies but are they going to trade interest rate risk with
the US for default risk with Southern Europe?)
But I suppose that printing money spreads the pain on the elderly and indigent out over a longer
period of time? Also, it gets some of the wealth transfer accomplished under the radar (from
investors who are napping, ie not actively managing their accounts)!!!