Best strategy for long bear market 2010-2020 (factor of 11 from 1981 to 2009)

Market Watch ^ | 4/14/2009 | Paul B. Farrell

[SeekAndFind]

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Never buy stocks. Never. Unless, of course, you love gambling (and losing) at the Wall Street casino. Or you don't mind making payments on your broker's BMW. Or you just joined a monastery and just took a vow of poverty. Otherwise, don't buy. Stocks are losers.

At least that's the only rational investment strategy you'll come away with after reading economist and long-time Forbes columnist Gary Shilling's analysis of the miserable performance of stocks during Wall Street's recent bull/bear cycles, beginning with the election of President Reagan in the early 1980s.

And it gets worse when you project into the bear market predicted for the next decade, till 2020. Ergo, more tough times ahead for investors, possibly a sequel to the painful sideways bear of 1968-1982.

So I ask you: Knowing the history, why would anyone in their right mind invest in stocks? You'd be a fool, right?

Yes. But join the club. We are a nation of "those who cannot learn from history," as the philosopher George Santayana once warned, so we "are doomed to repeat it." Statistics prove that year after year America's 95 million investors are indeed clueless fools, easily conned into buying stocks by what BusinessWeek once called the "Wall Street Hype Machine."

We never learn, no matter how painful the losses, we just keep repeating the same old mistakes, over and over, forever falling under Wall Street's magical spells. Admit it: We've become the laughingstock of history. Wall Street's giants were bankrupt, in fact and morally. In reality, they were nationalized. Their bosses are arrogant, greedy and incompetent. All should have been fired. Yet we were stupid enough to give them $2.2 trillion in tax dollars to bail themselves out.

[happygrl]

Guns and Butter, as a personal policy.