THERE’S A CERTAIN swagger that goes along with being an American. We’ve won the cold war, the Gulf war and so far the war on terrorism. Our currency is the international standard by which all others are judged and our companies are the most highly valued and actively traded in the world.
But along with the swagger comes myopia. Like many Americans, I too often fall prey to the fallacy that that world news is American news, world culture is American culture and the world market is the American market.
This Western-centric bias is echoed among the various economists, analysts and taking heads who are paid to pontificate on the state of the world economy. There’s a general consensus that whenever the world’s economy does turn around, the United States will once again be leading the charge higher.
These days being patriotic isn’t just popular, but hip. But as we always like to point out, the purpose of investing is to make money, not make a political statement. And for a number of factors, when it comes to putting new money to work these days, my sights are increasingly set outside U.S. borders. (more…)