I don't think Canada is very inexpensive anymore. I travel there all the time; it's rather on the expensive side. I think there's significant risk to the Canadian economy.
My view is that the U.S. market will eventually join the emerging markets on the downside because if you take a bearish view about emerging economies, you cannot be too optimistic about the U.S. because for many U.S. corporations, 50 percent or more of their profits come from emerging economies.
I do know some of the world's richest people. In monetary terms, they all performed very well. In terms of a fulfilling life, I am less sure.
I am surprised with the reelection of Mr. Obama. The S&P is only down, like, 30 points. I would have thought that the market on his reelection should be down at least 50%.
When you print money, the money does not flow evenly into the economic system. It stays essentially in the financial service industry and among people that have access to these funds, mostly well-to-do people. It does not go to the worker.
The politicians are all useless individuals. Nobody is reducing the problems in the U.S. or Europe, just putting on a Band-Aid and postponing the problems endlessly.
When you have a perfect free market, it's difficult to predict the future. But when you have a market that is disturbed by government manipulations and money-printing, it's impossible to make any predictions.
It's pointless to talk to Fed members about economics because they are academics who believe in money-printing. Some of them believe they didn't print enough, and so with these kinds of people, it is like running to the pope. What do you want to tell them?
In the 40 years I've been working as an economist and investor, I have never seen such a disconnect between the asset market and the economic reality... Asset markets are in the sky, and the economy of the ordinary people is in the dumps, where their real incomes adjusted for inflation are going down and asset markets are going up.
Buy a $100 U.S. bond and frame it to teach your children about inflation by watching the U.S. bond value diminish to almost nothing over the next 20 years.
If the Chinese bubble bursts one day, which inevitably will happen - maybe not tomorrow, maybe in three months, maybe in three years - when it happens, it will have devastating consequences for the global economy.
The media has brainwashed the electorate to expect the government to do something. The best economic policy of any government is to do nothing but reduce the size of the government, reduce the size of the laws, and reduce the size of regulations.