European Events Support the Fortress America Theme

Whatever will be in Europe, will be...

No matter.  In the summer and early fall of 2011, when it became clear that the US economy and markets were stronger than those of Europe, I went to and announced on The Daily Capitalist a "Fortress America" investment theme.  That applied to bonds, muni bonds being the low-hanging fruit as even AA and AAA-munis were then yielding more than Treasuries; then it applied to stocks when I invested/traded them-- AAPL being my #1 stock in 2012 and at times my only one- though it is international.

This theme continues.  It also applies to China and Japan.

Jeremy Grantham's latest valuation favors "high quality" US stocks over bonds or general stocks.  Only emerging markets rate a little better on his 7-year time frame, at the expense of greater expected error rates of what will occur versus what "should" occur.

Thus for an American, investing is easy.  Tax-exempts for income and stable asset value, Treasuries to hedge stocks, and research to find "high quality" stocks.

The Cyprus thing changes little from this side of the pond.  Will it be good for gold?  Could be, but per my latest Seeking Alpha piece, I'm concerned that the disinflationary aspects of the fiscal normalization, welcome though that direction is, resemble the trends of the later '90s, which depressed gold's price.

So maybe there's no rush to commit more funds to gold if one already has a position in place.

The rest of the world looks to be a bit more trouble than an American needs from an investment standpoint.