By Elliott Wave International

Talk with an investment advisor, and what’s the first piece of advice you will hear? Diversify your portfolio. The case for diversification is repeated so often that it’s come to be thought of as an indisputable rule. Hardly anyone makes the case against diversifying your portfolio. But because we believe that too much liquidity has made all markets act similar to one another, we make that case. Heresy? Not at all. Just because investment banks and stock brokerages say you should diversify doesn’t make it true. After all, their analysts nearly always say that the markets look bullish and that people should buy more now.  For a breath of fresh air on this subject, read what Bob Prechter thinks about diversification.

* * * * *

Excerpt taken from Prechter’s Perspective, originally published 2002, re-published 2004

Question: In recent years, mainstream experts have made the ideas of “buy and hold” and diversification almost synonymous with investing. What about diversification? Now it is nearly universally held that risk is reduced through acquisition of a broad-based portfolio of any imaginable investment category. Where do you stand on this idea?

Bob Prechter: Diversification for its own sake means you don’t know what you’re doing. If that is true, you might as well hold Treasury bills or a savings account. My opinion on this question is black and white, because the whole purpose of being a market speculator is to identify trends and make money with them. The proper approach is to take everything you can out of anticipated trends, using indicators that help you do that. Those times you make a mistake will be made up many times over by the successful investments you make. Some people say that is the purpose of diversification, that the winners will overcome the losers. But that stance requires the opinion that most investment vehicles ultimately go up from any entry point. That is not true, and is an opinion typically held late in a period when it has been true. So ironically, poor timing is often the thing that kills people who claim to ignore timing.

Sometimes the correct approach will lead to a diversified portfolio. There are times I have been long U.S. stocks, short bonds, short the Nikkei, and long something else. Other times, I’ve kept a very concentrated market position. My advice from mid-1984 to October 2, 1987, for instance, was to remain 100% invested in the U.S. stock market. During the bull market, I raised the stop-loss at each point along the wave structure where I could identify definite points of support. If I was wrong, investors would have been out of their positions. The potential was five times greater on the upside than the risk was on the downside, and five times greater in the stock market than any other area. Twice recently, in 1993 and 1995, I have had big positions in precious metals mining stocks when they appeared to me to be the only game in town. In 1993, it worked great, and they gained 100% in ten months. Diversification would have eliminated the profit. And every so often, an across-the-board deflation smashes all investments at once, and the person who has all his eggs in one basket, in this case cash, stays whole while everyone else gets killed.

* * * * *

Excerpt from The Elliott Wave Theorist, April 29, 1994

It is repeated daily that “global diversification” is self evidently an intelligent approach to investing. In brief, goes the line, an investor should not restrict himself to domestic stocks and bonds but also buy stocks and bonds of as many other countries as possible to “spread the risk” and ensure safety. Diversification is a tactic always touted at the end of global bull markets. Without years of a bull market to provide psychological comfort, this apparently self evident truth would not even be considered. No one was making this case at the 1974 low. During the craze for collectible coins, were you helped in owning rare coins of England, Spain, Japan and Malaysia? Or were you that much more hopelessly stuck when the bear market hit?

The Elliott Wave Theorist‘s position has been that successful investing requires one thing: anticipating successful investments, which requires that one must have a method of choosing them. Sometimes that means holding many investments, sometimes few. Recommending diversification so that novices can reduce risk is like recommending that novice skydivers strap a pillow to their backsides to “reduce risk.” Wouldn’t it be more helpful to advise them to avoid skydiving until they have learned all about it? Novices should not be investing; they should be saving, which means acting to protect their principal, not to generate a return when they don’t know how.

For the knowledgeable investor, diversification for its own sake merely reduces profits. Therefore, anyone championing investment diversification for the sake of safety and no other reason has no method for choosing investments, no method of forming a market opinion, and should not be in the money management business. Ironically yet necessarily given today’s conviction about diversification, the deflationary trend that will soon become monolithic will devastate nearly all financial assets except cash. If you want to diversify, buy some 6-month Treasury bills along with your 3-month ones.

Want More Reasons Why Diversification Should be Diverted from your Portfolio? Get our FREE report that explains the holes in the diversification argument. All you have to do is sign up as one of our Club EWI members. It’s free, and it will give you access to more than this diversification report. Follow this link to instantly download this special free report, Death to Diversification – What it Means for Your Investment Strategy.

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First, Let’s Lower the Bar

China’s currency is rising ever so slowly against the dollar. But is that hurting China? We will look at a very interesting chart and some research. And then we’ll gain some more insight into why the employment numbers seemed to surprise. I guess if you lower the bar, it’s easier to jump over. I also deal with the pushback from last week’s Outside the Box! And Ireland is on my radar. There is a lot to cover, so let’s jump in.

I start this week’s letter on a flight from Cleveland (where I was at the Cleveland Clinic meeting with my good friend and doctor Mike Roizen (of Oprah and the various “YOU” books with Mehmet Oz) on some non-health-related business, and we talked last night about the state of health care. Mike keeps pointing out that much of our health-care cost comes from chronic diseases that are either directly or partially lifestyle choices. And he is right. The data shows it. Smoking, overeating, lack of exercise – all contribute to our health-care bills. And health care was on my mind.

Now, a little mea culpa. I get letters from readers who start their missive out with something like, “I know you probably won’t read this, but…” Well, I can’t say I read every letter, but someone does and I get and read as many as I can. And my rule is that I get all the negative ones, and any letters that show particular thoughtfulness and give me suggested reading or just good suggestions. I do pay attention to you. It takes some time, I admit, but I think it is important.

And the feedback I got on last week’s Outside the Box on health care was definitely running much more on the negative side. And as it turns out, for good reason. There were just simply some factual errors in the piece that made it more partisan than it sounded when I first read it. And many readers justifiably took me to task for that.

What attracted me to the piece to begin with was the central fact that the incentives within the health-care bill give businesses significant monetary reasons to do things that are not in what I think of as the best interests of the economy or labor. Businesses will be able to save a great deal of money by canceling their employer-paid insurance plans and simply paying the fine and offering their employees some kind of cash payment to buy managed-care programs. Go to Friday’s USA Today. Read the story on Medicare-managed health care, about the shortage of specialty doctors and the denial of benefits that I think of as routine in my more or less plain-vanilla health insurance plan. I don’t think people are going to be happy.

Second, there is the incentive to hire part-time employees over full-time, and thereby not have to provide insurance. This is already an issue I see every week with my own kids, as getting full-time jobs even in relatively OK Texas is an issue. As a nation, we are already witnessing a disconcerting and still-rising level of part-time employment. Do we really want to encourage more of that?

If there is one thing we know in economics (and there are admittedly distressingly few of them), it is that people respond to incentives, whether intended or unintended. I don’t think the writers of the health-care bill intended to increase part-time employees, keep payrolls under 50 employees, or encourage businesses to dump their health insurance or move to outsourcing, etc. But if you are a business person facing budget and sales shortfalls, rising prices, and fierce competition (is there any other kind?), saving $2-3,000 per employee is going to be tempting. When two part-time employees cost $3-6000 a year less than one full-time? What do you choose when the boss is breathing down your neck about expenses? The recent employment data tells me that already businesses are opting for more part-time workers. It doesn’t work for every business, but it will for a lot of them. I hope that is not going to be the case, but I want policies that encourage and reward good corporate behavior.

For many people who read the letter, the factual errors obscured the main points. Frankly, I understand. I often have that reaction in reading other material myself. But Outside the Box is not “other material.” I put this out there, and with the core standards we have in place, I should not have been as tone deaf. I WILL be better. And in a few weeks, we will have a new website with reader forums and feedback (targeting December – this is a major project and they always take more time than I would like).

Two things I did take away from the feedback. First, most of my readers are amazingly civil in an era where simple civility on the internet is not the norm. And second, this is an extremely emotional issue. Most of us have stories about people who have been hurt by not having access to health care. And it is a lot more complex, with more moving parts, than any issue we face as a nation.

I spent some time with Newt Gingrich this Wednesday. He seems to me surprisingly upbeat about the potential for solutions to the health-care issue. He points out that there are some amazing medical advances just around the corner. A cure for Alzheimer’s would save, according to Newt, about $20 trillion over the coming decades. Cancer? Heart disease? My friend Pat Cox suggests we are on the edge of a tsunami of medical breakthroughs.

But we have been seemingly on the edge for a long time. As I wrote a few weeks ago:

Let’s look down the road. I think we will at best be in a Muddle Through Economy for the next two years. Unemployment is going to be above 8%, best-case, in 2012. If the Bush tax cuts are not extended, in my opinion it is almost a lock that we go into recession next year, unemployment goes to 12%, and underemployment gets even worse. That is not a good climate for Obama and the Democrats in 2012. It is especially bad when you look at the number of Democratic Senate seats up for re-election that are in conservative states. The Republicans could take a serious majority in the Senate.

And then what? Right now Republicans are running on promises that they will not cut Medicare and Social Security, but are going to reduce spending and get us closer to a balanced budget. But everyone knows that the only way to get the budget into some reasonable semblance of balance will be to either cut Medicare benefits or increase taxes.”

There are only the two options. Yes, you can reform medical care, and I think much of Obamacare should certainly be repealed, but that does not get us anywhere close to dealing with the real issue, and that’s a fact. There are tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities in our future, which must be dealt with.

Let me be very clear on this. I am not really worried about the supposed $75 trillion in unfunded Medicare liabilities in our future. That is an impossible number. If something can’t happen it won’t happen. Long before we get to that apocalypse, we find a bond market that simply refuses to fund US debt at anywhere near an affordable cost. Crisis and chaos will ensue.

People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them.

- Jean Monnet

The simple reality is that if We the People of the US want Medicare, in even a reformed and more efficient manner, we must find a way to pay for it. It will not be cheap. Raising income taxes on the “rich” is not enough. You have to go back and raise income taxes on the middle class, too. Oh, wait, that will be a drag on the economy and consumer spending. And in any event it will not be enough.

The only real way to pay for those benefits will be a value-added tax, or VAT. And while it could be introduced gradually, let there be no mistake that it will be a drag on economic growth. Government spending does not have a multiplier effect on the economy. It is at best neutral. What creates growth is private investment, increases in productivity, and increases in population. That’s it. Tax increases have a negative multiplier.

A significant VAT along with our current income taxes will give us an economy that looks more like the slow-growth, high-unemployment world of Europe. Can we figure out how to deal with that? Sure. But it is not growth-neutral.

Republicans in 2013 will be like the dog that caught the car. What do you do with it? The last time they (embarrassingly, we) really screwed it up. The defining political question of this decade will not be Iraq or Afghanistan, or the environment or any of a host of other problems. The single most important question will be what do you do with Medicare? Cut it or fund it? Reform it for sure, but reform is not enough to pay for the cost increases that will come from an increasingly aging Boomer generation.

There is no free lunch. At some point, Republicans cannot run on “no cuts in Medicare” and “no new taxes” and be honest. At least not this decade. Maybe when we have cured cancer and Alzheimer’s and heart disease and the common cold at some future point, medical costs will go down, but in the meantime we have to deal with reality.

You may be able to fool the voters, but you will not be able to fool the bond market. Not dealing with reality will create a very vicious response. Ask Greece.

And that is the national conversation we must have with ourselves. There is a cost to government. There is a cost to extended Medicare benefits. (I am blithely assuming we deal with all the “easy” stuff like Social Security, and make real cuts in other areas.)

Enough on medical issues. Let’s jump into the rest of the letter.

The Chinese Renminbi is Going Down, Not Up

While I was sitting in the trading room of my co-author of The Endgame, Jonathan Tepper, last week, we got to talking about the need for the Chinese currency to rise against the dollar, and of late it has been, slowly, accompanied by the moaning and groaning of the Chinese leadership. But has it really gone up? Take a look at the following charts I had the guys at Variant Perception make for us:

Notice that of China’s main trading partners, the US is the only one against whose currency the yuan has risen over the last three months. If you are in the eurozone, you have seen an almost 4% rise.

Now look at the next chart. We are comparing the Chinese yuan against the dollar and then against the trade-weighted Chinese yuan. Notice that for the last 18 months the trade-weighted yuan has dropped well over 10%! In terms of real trade with China’s real trading partners, the yuan has fallen in value! That is extraodinary.

Expect more calls from around the world for China to allow its currency to rise. And as China has to deal with inflation, it may be in their interest. We will see. But it does make you go “hmmm.”

First, Let’s Lower the Bar

I was sitting in London when the employment numbers came out last Friday, and I didn’t have time to really get into the data. I did send you Lacy Hunt’s quick analysis as to why it was weaker than it appeared, but something else did not seem right. I follow a few people who are pretty good at predicting the employment numbers (like Philippa Dunne of The Liscio Report). Most were expecting numbers in the 60,000 range. Most unusual for there to be such a big miss from these guys. I read the press release and saw nothing to raise my eyebrows. And then Alan Abelson in Barron’s gave us the following, after reciting the headline number:

“Happily, the always astute Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens provided a quickie explanation:

” ‘The seasonal bar which the payroll data must jump was (inexplicably and dramatically) lowered from prior Octobers.

” ‘Thus, in October 2009, the BLS set the bar at 870,000 jobs, similar to the 840,000 it anticipated in October 2008. This year, by contrast, it lowered the bar to 768,000. Mumbo, jumbo, payrolls presented “an upside surprise” of 100,000.’

“According to John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics, the BLS’ fiddling with the figures via what he calls ‘seasonal-factor games’ actually created 200,000 phantom jobs last month. John cites such finagling as the reason his prediction of an October decline and a rise in the jobless rate was wrong. It also explains why seasonally adjusted payrolls were revised upward by 110,000 in September, including 56,000 in August.”

In the opinion of your humble analyst, if they are going to make such changes, they should be announced up-front or noted prominently in the press release. People (foolishly) trade on these numbers and money is made and lost. This is serious stuff.

They Need to Borrow How Much? Really?

The team over at Recovery Partners sent this note along:

“This week we heard from the IMF that the total borrowing requirements of key governments in 2011 will amount to around $10.2 trillion. The estimate represents a rise of 7% from 2010 and over 27% of the annual GDP of the developed economies.This rollover profile exposes the vulnerabilities in thematurity composition of Sovereign liability portfolios and thelikelihood that most Sovereigns will find it impossible to appropriately de-risk their financial exposures by extending term or otherwiseexecuting an immunization strategy. The bottom line is that unless deficit control and the establishment of debt management performance benchmarks is adopted as a matter of urgency in many economies, it becomes very easy to envision the near term onset of another round of severe financial turbulence.”

That is obviously a lot of money. It is also government borrowing that is crowding out private investment. And as we look over the “pond,” the euro is again under pressure. Just when you thought QE2 was going to tank the dollar.

Irish Eyes Are Not Smiling

Mother Ireland (Dad said we were once Muldoons before we were kicked out) is having problems. It was only a few years ago that we talked about the Irish Miracle. They had gotten a grip on their fiscal deficits and were even running surpluses. And then came the housing bubble, and their bank problems dwarfed those (relatively) of the US.

Ireland is simply not having a good go of it. They can’t seem top catch a break of late -their Irish luck is abandoning them. Let’s look at some charts from my favorite slicer and dicer of data, Greg Weldon, which just hit my inbox. After noting the rise in suicides and calls to suicide hotlines due to economic pressures on farmers (who are caught in a drought) and foreclosures, he writes:

“… the Irish Central Bank determined that Ireland’s financial institutions needed MORE capital, essentially DOUBLING the cost of the original bailout, and obliterating ANY chance for cutting the Budget Deficit in 2010. In fact, according to “The Economist”, if we were to include the cost of the financial system bailout, and, consider the decline in GDP … Ireland’s Deficit-to-GDP Ratio, already FOUR TIMES the EU’s (allegedly) ‘hard-ceiling’ of 3%, as just under 12% … would EXPLODE, to 32% !!!!

“Subsequently, on October 6th Fitch cut their sovereign debt ‘rating’ for Ireland, to AA-, from A+, in order to … ‘reflect the exceptional and greater-than-expected cost of the nation’s bailout of its banking system.’

“Then note the ‘projected’ Deficit when we include the government’s increasingly large bailout of the country’s financial institutions. Irish eyes are no longer smiling … rather, Irish eyes are crying.

“During a debate on Tuesday in the Parliament, Prime Minister Cowen said …

” ‘… If this country and this parliament fails to make the necessary adjustments, then we put at risk the funding of the State after July of next year and what will happen then is that we will be faced with a situation where we will only be able to spend EUR 31 billion. The State could not go on spending EUR 50 billion a year, when it was only taking in EUR 31 billion. Being only able to spend EUR 31 billion would involve a serious adjustment in the level of (government) services that could be provided. No responsible government, therefore, could contemplate that approach.’

“Say what … no responsible government could contemplate spending what they take in?? Indeed, herein lies the core of the crisis … to cut spending by the amount needed to ‘fix’ the fiscal mess that European countries now find themselves facing … would be so dramatic as to cause INTENSE economic PAIN, enough so to drive even more Irish farmers, policemen, realtors, and plumbers … to suicide.”

I have been writing for years that much of Europe was in far worse shape than the US, and we are not in a good way. Irish 5-year bonds now cost 8.44%, up from below 4% in August, just three months ago. Ireland is going to have to finance debt of almost 40% of GDP this year and 20% next year. As they roll over that debt, interest-rate costs are going to skyrocket, making those budget cuts even harder.

And the same goes for Greece, Portugal, and Spain. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel having to face elections, she says her goal is to “enforce fiscal discipline in the euro area and avoid putting German taxpayer money on the line in any future bailout.” She noted at the G-20 meeting yesterday:

“There may be a conflict here between the interests of the financial world and the interests of politicians… We can’t constantly explain to our voters that taxpayers have to be on the hook for certain risks rather than those who make a lot of money taking those risks.”

This is not going to be easy. I expect it to end in tears for some of the more troubled countries. It is all so very sad.

La Jolla, New York and a Forbes Cruise

If it seems like I have been living on planes of late, I guess it’s because I have. And in another last-minute trip, Tiffani and I will go to La Jolla to meet with Jon Sundt and the management of Genworth, which has bought Altegris. I am rather enthusiastic about the new arrangement, as it opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Then I am home for a while. Thanksgiving will feature lots of kids and friends, and I am looking forward to it. I really enjoy cooking and the whole feel of the holiday. Then Tiffani and Ryan and I go to LA, where we get on a ship for the Forbes Cruise. I am looking forward to a little R&R going down the Mexican coast, and spending time with old friends and making new ones. I have to sing for my supper a few times, but I can do that. It is actually fun for me.

Then a quick trip to New York in mid-December (details to be determined), and then home for the holidays and Christmas. I love this time of year.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the season.

Your ready to relax analyst,

John Mauldin
John@FrontLineThoughts.com

Copyright 2010 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved

Note: The generic Accredited Investor E-letters are not an offering for any investment. It represents only the opinions of John Mauldin and Millennium Wave Investments. It is intended solely for accredited investors who have registered with Millennium Wave Investments and Altegris Investments at www.accreditedinvestor.ws or directly related websites and have been so registered for no less than 30 days. The Accredited Investor E-Letter is provided on a confidential basis, and subscribers to the Accredited Investor E-Letter are not to send this letter to anyone other than their professional investment counselors. Investors should discuss any investment with their personal investment counsel. John Mauldin is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA), which is an investment advisory firm registered with multiple states. John Mauldin is a registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, (MWS), an FINRA registered broker-dealer. MWS is also a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) and a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) registered with the CFTC, as well as an Introducing Broker (IB). Millennium Wave Investments is a dba of MWA LLC and MWS LLC. Millennium Wave Investments cooperates in the consulting on and marketing of private investment offerings with other independent firms such as Altegris Investments; Absolute Return Partners, LLP; Fynn Capital; Nicola Wealth Management; and Plexus Asset Management. Funds recommended by Mauldin may pay a portion of their fees to these independent firms, who will share 1/3 of those fees with MWS and thus with Mauldin. Any views expressed herein are provided for information purposes only and should not be construed in any way as an offer, an endorsement, or inducement to invest with any CTA, fund, or program mentioned here or elsewhere. Before seeking any advisor’s services or making an investment in a fund, investors must read and examine thoroughly the respective disclosure document or offering memorandum. Since these firms and Mauldin receive fees from the funds they recommend/market, they only recommend/market products with which they have been able to negotiate fee arrangements.

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Prechter, the famed market forecaster who specializes in Elliott wave analysis, sent similar warnings about the Nasdaq in 2000, real estate in 2006, the blue chips in 2007 and commodities in 2008. His forecasts proved deadly accurate.

In trademark fashion, Prechter now has his readers focused on something most mainstream investors, analysts and advisors are taking for granted: the safety and stability of the bond market.

Why worry about the safety of bonds, you ask? A recent USA Today article reported that investors put a “record-shattering” net $376 billion into bond mutual funds in 2009, and individual investors and mutual funds are “still showing the love” in 2010.

After such explosive growth, Prechter says bond investors have been pushed to the edge of a mile-high cliff. Millions of investors are just one step away from tumbling over the edge.

If your hard-earned savings are exposed to the developing risks in these markets, you owe it to yourself to heed Prechter’s urgent warning.

Download your free copy of Robert Prechter’s new 10-page report, The Next Major Disaster Developing for Bond Holders, now — it’s free.

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By Elliott Wave International

While many people spend time yearning for the financial markets to turn back up, a rare few have looked back in time to compare historical markets with the current situation – and then delivered a clear-eyed view of the future informed by knowledge of the past. One who has is Robert Prechter. When he thinks about markets and wave patterns, he goes back to the 1700s, the 1800s, and — most tellingly for our time now — the early 1900s when the Great Depression weighed down the United States in the late 1920s and early 1930s. With this large wash of history in mind, he is able to explain why he thinks we have a long way to go to get to the bottom of this bear market.

Here is an excerpt from the EWI Independent Investor eBook, which answers the question: How close to the bottom are we?
* * * * *
Originally written by Robert Prechter for The Elliott Wave Theorist, January 2009

Some people contact us and say, “People are more bearish than I have ever seen them. This has to be a bottom.” The first half of this statement may well be true for many market observers. If one has been in the market for less than 14 years, one has never seen people this bearish. But market sentiment over those years was a historical anomaly. The annual dividend payout from stocks reached its lowest level ever: less than half the previous record. The P/E ratio reached its highest level ever: double the previous record. The price-to-book value ratio went into the stratosphere, as did the ratio between corporate bond yields and the same corporations’ stock dividend yields.

During nine and a half of those years, from October 1998 to March 2008, optimism dominated so consistently that bulls outnumbered bears among advisors (per the Investors Intelligence polls) for 481 out of 490 weeks. Investors got so used to this period of euphoria and financial excess that they have taken it as the norm.

With that period as a benchmark, the moderate slippage in optimism since 2007 does appear as a severe change. But observe a subtle irony: When commentators agree that investors are too bearish, they say so to justify being bullish. Thus, as part of the crowd, they are still seeking rationalizations for their continued optimism, and one of their best excuses is that everyone else is bearish. This would be reasoning, not rationalization, if it were true.

But is the net reduction in optimism since 2000/2007 in fact enough to indicate a market bottom? For the rest of this issue, we will update the key indicators from Conquer the Crash that so powerfully signaled a historic top in the making. When we are finished, you will know whether or not the market is at bottom.

Figure 1 updates our picture of Supercycle and Grand Supercycle-degree periods of prosperity and depression. The top formed in the past decade is the biggest since 1720, yet, as you can see, the decline so far is small compared to the three that preceded it. There is a lot more room to go on the downside.

Figure 2 updates the Dow’s dividend yield. Over the past nine years, it has improved nicely, from 1.3 percent to 3.7 percent, near its level at previous market tops. If companies’ dividends were to stay the same, a 50 percent drop in stock prices from here would bring the Dow’s yield back into the area where it was at the stock market bottoms of 1942, 1949, 1974 and 1982. But of course, dividends will not stay the same.

Companies are cutting dividends and will cut more as the depression deepens. So, the falling stock market is chasing an elusive quarry in the form of an attractive dividend yield. This is a downward spiral that will not end until prices get ahead of dividend cuts and the Dow’s dividend yield goes above that of 1932, which was 17 percent (or until dividends fall so close to zero that the yield is meaningless).

Get the whole story about how much farther we have to go to a bear-market bottom by reading the rest of this article from EWI’s Independent Investor eBook. The fastest way to read it AND the six new chapters in EWI’s Independent Investor eBook is to become a member of Club EWI.

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By Editorial Staff

Think back to the fall of 2007. The deflationary “liquidity crunch” that over the next year-and-a-half cuts the DJIA in half, decimates commodities, real estate and world markets is only starting. Almost no one believes that the crash is coming — to a large degree, because everyone is convinced that the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, with Ben Bernanke at the helm, will never allow deflation to happen: It can just print money!

The excerpt you are about to read is from EWI president Robert Prechter’s October 19, 2007, Elliott Wave Theorist. If you find it insightful, read more of Bob’s writings in the free Club EWI resource, “Robert Prechter’s Most Important Writings on Deflation.” (Details below.)

You cannot pick up a newspaper, turn on financial TV or read an economist’s report without hearing that the Fed’s latest discount-rate cut is bullish because it indicates the Fed’s decision to “pump liquidity” into the system. This opinion is so completely wrong that it is hard to believe its ubiquity.

First of all, the Fed does not “decide” where it wants interest rates. All it does is follow the market. Figure 17 proves it. Wherever the T-bill rate goes, the Fed’s “target rate” for federal funds immediately follows. That’s all there is to it.

If you refuse to believe your eyes, then listen to the chairman; Alan Greenspan is very clear on this point. On September 17, a commentator on CNBC asked, “Did you keep the interest rates too low for too long in 2002-2003?” Greenspan immediately responded, “The market did.” Rates were not “too low” or the period “too long,” either, because the market, not the Fed, made the decision on the level and the time, and the market is never wrong; it is what it is. If investors in trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury debt worldwide had demanded higher interest, they would have gotten it, period.

Second, falling interest rates are almost never bullish. All you have to do to understand this point is look at Figure 18.

Interest rates fell persistently through three of the greatest bear markets in history: 1929-1932 in the Dow, 1990-2003 in the Japanese Nikkei, and 2000-2002 in the NASDAQ. The only comparably deep bear market in the past 80 years in which interest rates rose took place in the 1970s when the Value Line index dropped 74%. Economists all draw upon this experience, but they ignore the others. Today’s environment of extensive investment leverage and an Everest of debt in the banking system is far more like 1929 in the U.S. and 1989 in Japan than it is like the 1970s. Why is a decline in interest rates bearish in such an environment? Because it means a decline in the demand for credit. When people want less of something, the price goes down.

The recent drop in rates indicates less borrowing, which means that the primary prop under investment prices — the expansion of credit — is weakening. That’s one reason why stock prices fell in 2000-2002 and why they are vulnerable now. This is the opposite of “pumping liquidity”; it’s a slackening in liquidity.

Elliott Wave International (EWI) is the world’s largest market forecasting firm. EWI’s 20-plus analysts provide around-the-clock forecasts of every major market in the world via the internet and proprietary web systems like Reuters and Bloomberg. EWI’s educational services include conferences, workshops, webinars, video tapes, special reports, books and one of the internet’s richest free content programs, Club EWI.

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2. Bob Prechter Points Out The Many Signs Of Deflation
3. Bernanke’s Burn Notice

This eye-opening free report, which represents more than 10 years of research by Robert Prechter, goes beyond the Fed’s history and government mandate; it digs into the Fed’s real motivations for being the United States’ “lender of last resort.” In this 34-page report, you’ll discover how the Fed’s actions, combined with public outrage, may ultimately lead to its demise, plus much more about its secret activities and how it affects your money.

Download your free copy of EWI’s Understanding the Fed eBook, here.

About the Publisher, Elliott Wave International
Founded in 1979 by Robert R. Prechter Jr., Elliott Wave International (EWI) is the world’s largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.

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It has been a while since we looked at the dollar index, so today we decided to dissect this market and look at it step-by-step.

What is happening in this market is very interesting and I think you will see in this short video just what we have in mind.

As always, our videos are free to watch and there are no registration requirements. Do you agree with my analysis of the dollar index? Leave a comment and let us know what you see.

Watch the free video here: Dollar Index Going Higher?

Running time: 3:31

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You got your brackets filled out before the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament’s opening game on Thursday afternoon. Good — now sit back and enjoy the games. But if you’re looking for a good read during the numerous and lengthy time outs, we’ve got just the thing. It’s the most important investment report you will read in 2010. Forget the theoretical and hypothetical sorts of analysis that occupy so much space online. Bob Prechter gives 22 real-life examples of how deflation is beginning to spread in the U.S. economy — along with 13 charts that make the examples even clearer.

You want to know whether to prepare for inflation or deflation? This report will answer your questions. Read this excerpt to see what we mean. Oh, and try to forget that a No. 2 seed (Villanova) almost got upset in the first round and that Georgetown, a No. 3 seed, got beat by Ohio University, a 14 seed.

* * * * *

States Are Broke and Approaching Insolvency
While state “regulators” clamp down on profligate banks, the same states’ legislatures continue to blow money. For years, state governments have been spending every dime they could squeeze out of taxpayers plus all they could borrow. (The lone exception is Nebraska, which prohibits state indebtedness over $100k. Whatever Nebraska’s official position on any other issue, by this action alone it is the most enlightened state government in the union.)

But now even states’ borrowing ability has run into a brick wall, because the basis of their ability to pay interest—namely, tax receipts—is evaporating. The goose—the poor, overdriven taxpayer—is dying, and the production of golden eggs, which allowed state governments to binge for the past 40 years, is falling. The only reason that states did not either default on their loans or drastically cut their spending over the past year is that the federal government sucked a trillion dollars out of the loan market and handed it to countless undeserving entities, including state governments.

“It’s hard to imagine what happens when stimulus money runs out,” says a budget expert. (USA, 10/29/09) But it is not at all hard to imagine what will happen. Conquer the Crash imagined state insolvency seven years ago. The breezy transfer of money from innocent savers to state spenders is going to end, and when it does, states will cut spending and “services” drastically. They will also default on their debts, which will be deflationary.

Elliott Wave International’s latest free report puts 2010 into perspective like no other. The Most Important Investment Report You’ll Read in 2010 is a must-read for all independent-minded investors. The 13-page report is available for free download now. Learn more here.

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By Nico Isaac

• So far in 2010, the number of US bank failures has reached 25, a rate of two per week. This compares to 25 total bank failures for ALL of 2008, and three for 2007.
• The benchmark KBW Bank Index still stands 60% below its 2007 peak, while one-third of all US banks reported a net loss for 2009.
• The FDIC’s list of “problem” institutions rose from 552 to 702 from Q3 to Q4 of 2009.
• And each new day could bring a new, personally addressed letter to announce the name change of your financial institution.

Yet — no matter how grave the data gets, few people imagine the corporate banking crisis trickling down to average Joe or Jane and their lollipop-dispensing drive-through bank tellers.

It’s not naive to think that, either. The agreement is understood: Money goes into the bank as liquid capital, and comes out as a loan certificate. Practically speaking, your account balance is only as secure as the loans the bank makes with its depositors’ money. The trust in that exchange reflects two main beliefs:

1) Banks know best how to allocate their clients’ money so as to ensure the greatest risk-to-reward ratio.
2) Banks are guaranteed by the Federal government, via the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Well, as the latest report from our complimentary Club EWI service reveals — neither one is as it seems. This 15-page exclusive compiles the most groundbreaking insights from various collected works of EWI president Bob Prechter himself, including: the best-selling book Conquer the Crash and previous Elliott Wave Theorist publications. Off the top are these riveting thought-burners:

How are banks using your money? Not wisely. “At latest count, US banks report $6.942 Trillion in deposits, and $6.945 Trillion in loans. In other words, the average bank in the US has lent out 100% of its deposits.”

Where is your money going? For the most part, it’s tied up in mortgage-backed securities. Last count: One in every 418 U.S. homes have filed for foreclosure, while the rate of default on commercial mortgages doubled in Q4 of 2009. See the problem?

What about the trusted sticker in the front window of US banks assuring that the FDIC guarantees to refund depositor’s losses of up to $100,000? Well, as the Club EWI report reveals, this sticker is merely a “symbol of confidence,” NOT a certainty of it. The piece goes on to add:

“Did you know that most of the FDIC’s money comes from other banks? When the FDIC rescues weak banks by charging healthier ones higher ‘premiums,’ overall bank deposits are depleted, causing the net loan-to-deposit ratio to rise. Ultimately the federal government backs the FDIC, which sounds like a sure thing. But if tax receipts fall, the government will be hard pressed to save a large number of banks with its own diminishing supply of capital. Huge illusions can melt away in a flash if the system fails.”

Where then is a bank I can trust? Here, the Club EWI report provides a list of the Top 100 highest-rated banks in America by state based on third-quarter 2009 data. The publication also reveals the global jurisdictions that “provide wealth preservation service as opposed to interest income and daily transaction conveniences.”

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By Nico Isaac

For over ten decades, the mainstream financial world has embraced the view that external news events drive trend changes in the markets. In less than ten minutes, EWI’s senior tutorial instructor Wayne Gorman shatters that very idea into a fine dust, swept away into thin air.

In part one of his exclusive, three-part Club EWI video series “Why Use The Wave Principle,” Wayne first assesses the pitfalls of relying on macroeconomic models to forecast; namely: “An investor is lured into the market at just the worst time, when it’s time to sell, and forced out just at the best time to buy.”

As for real world examples of this happening, Wayne spans three hundred years of financial history to reveal how the most pivotal economic, political, and environmental events failed to alter the course of their respective markets. Here, the free video includes groundbreaking charts on these (and more) well known episodes:

• The S&P 500 and Enron from 2000-2002: The stock market ROSE and continued to proceed upward AFTER the largest US corporate scandal and bankruptcy ever (at the time).
• The Dow Industrials and GDP quarterly data from 1970 to early 2000s: After the release of major negative GDP numbers, the market for the most part ROSE, just the opposite of what most market analysts and investors expect.
• The Dow and profound political events over the last 80 years: In the 1930s and 1940s, a series of negative incidents — i.e. Hitler rising to power, World War II, and the Holocaust — preceded a powerful uptrend in stocks all the way into the 1960s.
• Stock market charts of the five countries most affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami (India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand). Four out of the five ROSE after the natural disaster…

Believe it or not, we’ve only scratched the surface. In his myth-busting, free video “Why Use the Wave Principle,” Wayne Gorman presents a total of 40 charts that capture failed fundamental analysis of the world’s leading financial markets. Wayne recalls this expression from a famous, Nobel Prize winning economist:

“Economic reasoning will be of no value in cases of uncertainty.”

And he offers this response:

“But isn’t that what we have in financial markets: cases of uncertainty? We need a different type of reasoning, one that will help us to avoid the pitfalls shown on the previous charts. That’s why the Wave Principle is so important. It offers a unique perspective and a market discipline of rules and guidelines that help investors avoid buying at tops and liquidating at bottoms. It helps to explain and understand trends before they happen.”

The flaw in Economic 101, cause-and-effect theory is one of the easiest things to prove. But it’s also one of the hardest things for many investors to accept. Now is the time to do so. Watch the free “Why Use the Wave Principle” video in its entirety today at absolutely no cost. Simply sign on to join the rapidly expanding Club EWI and take advantage of the amazing educational benefits membership has to offer.

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