The IMF 171 countries that the UN, NATO, & U.S. protect [lilypads],govern,etc…

IRAN: DRUMS OF WAR BEATING LOUDER: U.S. Mounts Further Military Build-Up in Persian Gulf…

With the drums of war beating ever louder against Iran, the U.S. military has quickly moved to reestablish a war footing in the Persian Gulf.  The preparations for a looming military confrontation thus continue apace. 

 According to the Washington Post (1/27), “The Pentagon is rushing to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East.”  As the paper reports, the USS Ponce, a 40-year old amphibious transport dock previously set for decommission, will now be converted into a special ops hub, and then likely sent to the Persian Gulf. 

The Pentagon, the Post reports, is seeking to retrofit the USS Ponce on an accelerated timeline. In fact, the military has gone ahead and waived “normal procurement rules because any delay presented a ‘national security risk.’”

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reports (1/28) the Pentagon has notified Congress that it will divert an additional $82 million to refine the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP).  (The MOP is a 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bomb “specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.”)

The decision to seek an upgrade in the MOP reportedly comes after a series of tests revealed that the ordinance remains incapable of destroying certain Iranian nuclear facilities, such as the enrichment site at Fordow, located near the holy city of Qom.  (Fordow is buried deep within the mountainside, below 260 feet of rock and soil). 

The Journal also reports that, “The decision to ask now for more money to develop the weapon was directly related to efforts by the U.S. military’s Central Command to prepare military options against Iran as quickly as possible.”   And thus much the same as with the retrofitting of the USS Ponce, the Pentagon has decided to sidestep the normal budgetary request process in seeking additional funds for the MOP.  As Journal notes, “The Pentagon deems the MOP upgrades to be a matter of some urgency.”

Meanwhile, it was also reported Friday that the joint Israel-U.S. war games—deemed Austere Challenge 12—have been rescheduled for October 2012.  The games were originally scheduled for spring, but were postponed on January 15 for reasons that were unclear.  But with Austere Challenge 12 now set to take place in October, U.S. military officers are scheduled to begin arriving in Israel this coming week in preparation for the largest joint operation ever conducted between the two armed forces.

These latest military maneuvers come on the heels of an announced U.S. troop build-up in the region revealed earlier this month.  As the Los Angeles Times first reported (1/12), the build-up, including the stationing of 15,000 U.S. troops in Kuwait, is “intended as a quick-reaction and contingency force in case a military crisis erupts in the standoff with Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapons program.”

Practical Politics since the beginning of man…divide & conquer…

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H. L. Mencken

SUPERPOWER: Behind the Scenes of America’s National Security Apparatus…

“The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”   -Harry S. Truman

SUPERPOWER: A documentary film by Barbara-Anne Steegmuller

SUPERPOWER: A documentary film by Barbara-Anne Steegmuller
Available to order from Global Research:
https://store.globalresearch.ca/store/superpower-dvd/

SUPERPOWER is a comprehensive film that asks tough questions and goes behind the scenes of America’s national security apparatus and military actions. Far from a conspiracy film about the dangers of government secrets and regime change, this well-balanced film straddles the philosophical divide and allows viewers to understand the US quest for global dominance through economic and military strategy that is exposed through review of historical events, personal interviews, and analysis of US foreign policy.

Featuring interviews with Michel Chossudovsky, Bill Blum, Chalmers Johnson and Noam Chomsky, among many others.

SUPERPOWER has won a number of awards, including the 5th Annual Hollywood F.A.M.E. Award for Documentary of the Year 2011 as well as the 2011 32nd Annual People’s Choice Bronze Telly Award.

For more information, visit:
http://superpowerthemovie.com

Available to order from Global Research:
https://store.globalresearch.ca/store/superpower-dvd/

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• Mitt Romney: The man on the wedding cake? (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory Season 2 Episode 3 Part 2 of 3 (Wall Street)…

Contributors to the major candidates for President according to how much spent…

Image via Wikipedia

These table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2012 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations’ PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals’ immediate families.Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Because of contribution limits, organizations that bundle together many individual contributions are often among the top donors to presidential candidates. These contributions can come from the organization’s members or employees (and their families). The organization may support one candidate, or hedge its bets by supporting multiple candidates. Groups with national networks of donors – like EMILY’s List and Club for Growth – make for particularly big bundlers.

MITT ROMNEY (R)

~jude conclusion…Banks….Investment Corps…

RON PAUL (R)

~jude conclusion…Military…he advocates less/to no wars and major Corps….

NEWT GINGRICH (R)

~jude conclusion…Insurance & Banks….

RICK SANTORUM (R)

~jude conclusions…Healthcare, Insurance, Energy…

RickPerry (R)

~jude conclusions…energy, TX, Healthcare, Banks…

Michele Bachman (R)

~jude conclusions…media & SEO, Industry, Pharma, college loans?, Transport…

Barack Obama(D)

Please take into account of *HOW MUCH $$$* was contributed by each Corp…or legalize corps employees/shareholders…

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00009638

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• The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup For Jan. 13, 2012 (huffingtonpost.com)
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Special to Climate Depot – Lord Christopher Monckton reports from UN Climate Summit…

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa

DURBAN, South Africa — “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention – Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.

Main points:

• A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.
• “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”. Also, “there will be no commodification [whatever that may be: it is not in the dictionary and does not deserve to be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.
• “Right to survive”: The draft childishly asserts that “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century, according to eight years’ data from the Envisat satellite? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite, the new kid on the block, shows that sea-level has actually dropped over the past three years.

• War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to climate change. There are other reasons why war ought to cease, but the draft does not mention them.
• A new global temperature target will aim, Canute-like, to limit “global warming” to as little as 1 C° above pre-industrial levels. Since temperature is already 3 C° above those levels, what is in effect being proposed is a 2 C° cut in today’s temperatures. This would take us halfway back towards the last Ice Age, and would kill hundreds of millions. Colder is far more dangerous than warmer.
• The new CO2 emissions target, for Western countries only, will be a reduction of up to 50% in emissions over the next eight years and of “more than 100%” [these words actually appear in the text] by 2050. So, no motor cars, no coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, no aircraft, no trains. Back to the Stone Age, but without even the right to light a carbon-emitting fire in your caves. Windmills, solar panels and other “renewables” are the only alternatives suggested in the draft. There is no mention of the immediate and rapid expansion of nuclear power worldwide to prevent near-total economic destruction.
• The new CO2 concentration target could be as low as 300 ppmv CO2 equivalent (i.e., including all other greenhouse gases as well as CO2 itself). That is a cut of almost half compared with the 560 ppmv CO2 equivalent today. It implies just 210 ppmv of CO2 itself, with 90 ppmv CO2 equivalent from other greenhouse gases. But at 210 ppmv, plants and trees begin to die. CO2 is plant food. They need a lot more of it than 210 ppmv.
• The peak-greenhouse-gas target year – for the West only – will be this year. We will be obliged to cut our emissions from now on, regardless of the effect on our economies (and the lack of effect on the climate).
• The West will pay for everything, because of its “historical responsibility” for causing “global warming”. Third-world countries will not be obliged to pay anything. But it is the UN, not the third-world countries, that will get the money from the West, taking nearly all of it for itself as usual. There is no provision anywhere in the draft for the UN to publish accounts of how it has spent the $100 billion a year the draft demands that the West should stump up from now on.

THE 9/11 “BIG LIE”. WHEN FICTION BECOMES FACT…

See also Global Research’s 9/11 and War on Terrorism Archive

You Only Believe the Official 9/11 Story Because You Don’t Know the Official 9/11 Story - by Jesse Richard – 2011-09-02 I don’t believe the official story of 9/11 because I know the official story of 9/11!

9/11: Who Really Benefited? - by Captain America – 2011-07-24 Fact and Not Fiction… Forget conspiracy theories. Instead look at reality. Dare ask yourself who actually seems to have benefited from the 9-11 calamity…

9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan and the Soviet-Afghan War to George W Bush and September 11, 2001 - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2010-09-09 Osama bin Laden was recruited by the CIA in 1979. The US spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings.

Masterminds, Mosques and Mass Insanity: “War on Terrorism” Propaganda Ratcheted up Ahead of War Escalation - by Larry Chin – 2010-08-20 The perpetual threat posed by a fabricated outside enemy, and a militarized, fearful populace, remain the centerpieces of elite policy… Where was Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001? - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-11 September 11, 2001: The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11: Creating the Osama bin Laden “Legend” - by Chaim Kupferberg – 2011-09-11 9/11, Osamagate and The “Blowback” - by Prof Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-11 9/11 and the War on Terror: Polls Show What People Think 10 Years Later - by Washington’s Blog – 2011-09-10 The post-9/11 decade of lies The myth of 9/11, imbedded inextricably into the fibers of society and culture… - by Larry Chin – 2011-09-08 VIDEO: AFTER 9/11: TEN YEARS OF WAR Special Feature Production Now on GRTV - by James Corbett – 2011-09-08 Ten Years Later: Who Is Osama bin Laden? - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-07 911; A Time for Truth - by Ethan Jacobs – 2011-09-07 VIDEO: Paul Craig Roberts on the 9/11 10th Anniversary New GRTV Feature Interview now online - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-09-06 Libyan NATO Supported Rebels Currently Listed by US State Department as Terrorists - by Tony Cartalucci – 2011-09-04 The Pentagon Attack on 9/11: A Refutation of the “Flyover Hypothesis” Analysis of the Flight Path - by Dr. Frank Legge, David Chandler – 2011-09-04 September 11, 2001: The CIA’s Islamist Cover Up - by Ian Johnson – 2011-09-03 VIDEO: Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 Watch the new GRTV Feature Interview - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-01 Al-Qaeda and NATO’s Islamic Extremists Taking Over Libya - by Alex Newman – 2011-08-31 Libya: The Greatest Betrayal: Handing Libya over to Al Qaeda - by Tony Cartalucci – 2011-08-30 9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything? - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-08-24 VIDEO: Architects & Engineers: Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 Watch the important new report on GRTV - 2011-08-21 9/11: “Honest Mistake” or BBC Foreknowledge of Collapse of WTC 7? Jane Standley Breaks Her Silence - by James Higham – 2011-08-18 Former Counterterrorism Czar Accuses Tenet, Other CIA Officials of Cover-Up - by Jason Leopold – 2011-08-11 Pakistan TV Report Contradicts US Claim of Bin Laden’s Death - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-08-06 Onset of Imperial Decline: Osama Bin Laden and the Aftermath of 9/11 - by Devon DB – 2011-08-05 The Mysterious Death of Osama bin Laden: Creating Evidence Where There Is None - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-08-04 VIDEO: 9/11 Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out See the trailer for this ground-breaking film on GRTV - 2011-08-03 The US Dictatorship and its White House Servant ‘President’ - by Finian Cunningham – 2011-08-01 The US-Al Qaeda Alliance: Bosnia, Kosovo and Now Libya. Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists - by Prof. Peter Dale Scott – 2011-07-29 Terrorist bombing in Mumbai. Pakistan versus the US: Moving on - by Eric Walberg – 2011-07-22 The “War On Terror” Is A $6 Trillion Racket, Exceeding The Total Cost Of World War II - by David DeGraw – 2011-07-06 Obama Administration Shuts Down Investigations Into Bush-era Torture - by Tom Carter – 2011-07-05 9/11 and the Orwellian Redefinition of “Conspiracy Theory” - by Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-06-20 Everything We’re Doing Now Was Planned BEFORE 9/11 - by Washington’s Blog – 2011-06-20 Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg: Government Has ORDERED the Media Not to Cover 9/11 - by Washington’s Blog – 2011-06-15 Imperial Eye on Pakistan Pakistan in Pieces, Part 1 - by Andrew Gavin Marshall – 2011-05-28 VIDEO: The Last Word on Osama Bin Laden Latest Corbett Report now on GRTV - by James Corbett – 2011-05-24 Bombs in the World Trade Center: Analysis - by Washington’s Blog – 2011-05-24 Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden - by Jeffrey Kaye – 2011-05-23 Washington Still Working Hard to Plug Gaps in the Bin Laden Assassination Story Never before in history have lies been so powerful and pervasive - by Patrick Henningsen – 2011-05-23 Oh What a Lovely War! - by Barbara Nimri Aziz – 2011-05-23 Is the US Driving the World Towards World War III: Osama’s Alleged Compound. How Many SEALs Died? - by Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-05-21 The Ongoing bin Laden Saga: Can Americans Be Unplugged? - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-05-16 Bin Laden & The 911 Illusion: Secret Societies & Masterminds - by Dean Henderson – 2011-05-14 In the Theater of the Absurd: US-NATO Support “Al Qaeda in Libya” - by Gerald A. Perreira – 2011-05-14 Osama died in 2001: MSNBC hit piece unwittingly reveals corroboration for Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik’s assertion - by Paul Joseph Watson – 2011-05-13 Al Qaeda: The Database. - by Pierre-Henri Bunel – 2011-05-12 9/11 Truth and the Collapse of Steel Framed Buildings - by Robert Halfhill – 2011-05-11 Pakistan, Osama bin Laden and the “Global War on Terrorism” - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-05-11 The Assassination of Osama bin Laden: Glaring Anomalies in the Official Narrative Osama was Left Handed… - by Felicity Arbuthnot – 2011-05-11 “American Justice”: The Targeted Assassination of Osama Bin Laden Extrajudicial executions are unlawful - by Prof. Marjorie Cohn – 2011-05-10 Americans Are Living In 1984 - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-05-09 Interview with Osama bin Laden. Denies his Involvement in 9/11 Full text of Pakistani paper’s Sept 01 “exclusive” interview - 2011-05-09 Osama Bin Laden and The 911 Illusion: The 9/11 Short-Selling Financial Scam Part II - by Dean Henderson – 2011-05-09 The Story of Osama bin (Son of) Laden - by Dimitri Diamant – 2011-05-08 Bin Laden Home Videos Released … Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001? - by Washington’s Blog – 2011-05-07 Mission Accomplished? Osama May Yet Haunt Obama - by Felicity Arbuthnot – 2011-05-07 Osama and the Ghosts of September 11: “Proof that Obama is Lying” - by Michael C. Ruppert – 2011-05-07 The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden - by Fidel Castro Ruz – 2011-05-07 Media Scrambles as Bin Laden Story Crumbles - by Alex Newman – 2011-05-06 Osama Bin Laden in Death and in Liife Continues to Serve his CIA Masters - by Giles Dexter, Patrick Henningsen – 2011-05-06 Osama bin Laden: Terror Mastermind with Nine Lives - 2011-05-06 Nailing Osama Bin Laden: Was it a military or a media operation? Why now? - by Danny Schechter – 2011-05-06 Dancing on the Grave of 9/11. Osama and “The Big Lie” - by Larry Chin – 2011-05-05  See also Global Research’s 9/11 and War on Terrorism Archive

THE CLOCK IS TICKING: “Shadow War” Heating Up. War With Iran: A Provocation Away?…

By Tom Burghardt

Image via Wikipedia

Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran’s uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations.

The Isfahan complex transforms mined uranium into uranium fluoride gas which is then “spun” by centrifuges that enrich it into usable products for medical research and for Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program.

While Iranian officials sought to distance themselves from initial reporting by the semi-official Fars news agency that a “loud explosion” was heard across the city, but that “the sound of the explosion was from [a] military exercise,” has been contradicted by several sources.

Indeed, some Iranian officials have denied that an explosion even took place.

On Tuesday however, The Times reported that “satellite imagery … confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran.”

“The images,” Times reporter Sheera Frenkel averred, “clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was ‘no doubt’ that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was ‘no accident’.”

Despite clear evidence that Israel and the United States have stepped-up their shadow war against the Islamic Republic, Defense Minister Ehud Barak “played down speculation on Saturday that Israel and U.S.-led allies were waging clandestine war on Iran, saying sanctions and the threat of military strikes were still the way to curb its nuclear program,” Reuters reported.

Proverbial “facts on the ground” however, tell a different tale.

The latest attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear program followed a blast two weeks ago at the sprawling Bid Ganeh missile base 25 miles west of Tehran.

That blast killed upwards of 30 members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran’s missile program.

How to Play the Rescue…

~i am posting this article as i lost [*hands down* this August] a debate on whether one should keep some cash on hand…if they missed out on the metals…i do believe i was in fact called “stupid”… lolll~jude ;)

By BEN LEVISOHN And JOE LIGHT

A little coordination can go a long way.

After the Federal Reserve and five other central banks on Wednesday announced a joint effort to support the global financial system, stock markets around the world zoomed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 4.2%, its largest one-day spike since March 2009.

The question on investors’ minds is whether this latest rally has legs, or whether it will fade away like so many others in the past few months.

History could offer a clue. A Wall Street Journal analysis of market data provided by Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton of the London Business School suggests the central-bank intervention might indeed be a turning point for the markets: U.S. and emerging-market stocks may be poised to outperform, while European stocks could be headed for more trouble. There is enough uncertainty to warrant a healthy dollop of Treasurys and cash in investors’ portfolios as well, for safety.

“There are possible positive catalysts that could paint a constructive picture for equities in 2012,” says Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management. “But at the same time we’re telling people they need to keep some money in cash until there’s better visibility.”

On Wednesday, the Fed joined with the European Central Bank and the central banks of England, Japan, Canada and Switzerland to make it easier and cheaper for banks to swap foreign currencies for dollars. (Separately, Chinese authorities reduced banks’ reserve requirements in a bid to stimulate lending and boost economic growth.)

As government interventions go, the latest foray isn’t nearly as big as the Fed’s recent bond-buying programs or the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008. But it did signal that central banks are ready to head off the kind of liquidity crisis that could derail the global financial system.

Coordinated moves like the one on Wednesday are rare but not unprecedented. In 2008, the Fed entered into similar agreements with central banks to arrest a frenzied flight out of just about everything and into dollars. Central banks also moved following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when damage to New York threatened to wreak havoc on the financial system.

Even as far back as 1931, the global banking community, through the Bank for International Settlements, tried to quell a crisis following the collapse of Vienna’s Credit-Anstalt, then that nation’s largest bank, by providing loans to Austria. The attempt was a case of too little, too late; the crisis soon spread to Germany and elsewhere, worsening the Great Depression.

History suggests the latest intervention could be good for certain asset classes. Over the past 80 years, central banks have joined forces at least seven times during financial crises, albeit in different ways and amid different circumstances from today’s.

On average, U.S. stocks had a real return of 9.1% in the three months following a coordinated intervention, 10.6% after a year and 24.5% after two years, according to the Journal’s analysis of the data provided by Profs. Dimson, Marsh and Staunton. The average annual return for stocks from 1900 to 2010 was 6.3%.

Treasurys, too, produced strong returns. They averaged 7%, 8.5% and 15.2% during the three months, one year and two years following an intervention, respectively, compared with an average annual return of 1.8% from 1900 to 2010.

Some major caveats are in order. The “swap agreements” announced on Wednesday and in 2007-08 don’t compare easily with interventions of the past. Central banks frequently have worked together over the years to prop up currencies—but moves designed to provide liquidity to the global financial system have been less common, notes Michael Bordo, an economics professor at Rutgers University.

“What the Fed did in 2008 was something new,” he says.

The closest parallels may be the international cooperation after the 1998 Russian default, the terrorist strikes of 2001 and the 2008 crisis, says Carmen Reinhart, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. In all those cases, the efforts to provide liquidity prevented a collapse of the financial system in the short run but didn’t solve underlying economic problems.

What’s more, while the average returns have been strong, there has been plenty of variation.

While U.S. stocks were higher three months, one year and two years after the 2008 intervention, investors would have lost 15% in the year following the 2001 intervention and 3.2% after two years.

Still, there are lessons to be gleaned from the past.

First, the closer a market is to the epicenter of a crisis, the less likely it is to post positive returns. European stocks, for example, outpaced U.S. stocks by more than 20 percentage points during the year following the October 2008 intervention.

Likewise, European stocks fell just 6.2% in the year following the 2001 terrorist attacks, compared with a 15% decline for U.S. stocks.

By contrast, U.S. stocks outpaced European shares by nearly 19 percentage points following the attempts to shore up the global financial system after Russia’s default in 1998.

Another important lesson: Interventions don’t always follow a neat pattern for investors. Following the collapse of Credit-Anstalt in 1931, for example, U.S. stock investors lost 51.5% during the next year.

With that in mind, here’s how investors should approach their stock, bond and cash holdings.

 Stocks

U.S. investors often are encouraged to invest more money abroad. They might want to tread carefully now.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has lost just 1% this year, compared with a 13.5% drop for Europe’s Stoxx 600 index. Meanwhile, the companies in the S&P 500 with the least international exposure have outperformed those with the most exposure by 7.1 percentage points, according to BofA Merrill Lynch.

The U.S. might keep outperforming, says Sam Katzman, chief investment officer at Constellation Wealth Advisors in New York. “If anyone can shelter themselves from what’s going on internationally, it’s the U.S.,” he says. “Money that might have been flowing to Europe might be flowing here.”

The U.S. economy has held up comparatively well thus far. On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department reported the unemployment rate for November fell by 0.4 percentage point from October to 8.6%, the lowest in nearly three years.

Yet with the risks still high, investors should focus their stock purchases on areas that provide relative safety, some strategists say. That means dividend-paying stocks, which have beaten non-dividend-paying stocks by 7.8 percentage points this year.

Growth companies whose earnings are rising steadily might be worth a look as well. “We see value in technology stocks,” says Emily Sanders, chairman and CEO of Sanders Financial Management in Norcross, Ga. “But we’re not jumping in with both feet for clients.”

European stocks might be tempting given this year’s slump. But the economic outlook remains cloudy. The euro zone’s purchasing-managers index, a gauge of manufacturing activity, fell in November to a level consistent with a 1% quarterly drop in gross domestic product, according to research firm Capital Economics.

Emerging markets are another story. Although they have been punished when they have been at the center of market crises, they have performed much better during recent crises.

In the year after the 1997 devaluation of the Thai baht, for example, emerging-market stocks lost almost a quarter of their value. But a decade later, in the year after the 2008 global intervention, they returned 89%.

Many emerging markets, especially those in Asia, may be more insulated from the European crisis than investors think, says Brad Durham, managing director of EPFR Global.

“We believe emerging markets have bottomed,” says Ms. Shalett of BofA Merrill Lynch. She recommends investors target emerging markets stocks in Asia and Latin America, while avoiding markets more exposed to the European crisis, such as those in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

 Cash and Bonds

Even though the central bank intervention has eased short-term concerns, the European common currency’s long-term picture remains cloudy, says Gary Richardson, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine.

“Central banks around the world don’t have many arrows left in the quiver,” he says. “It looks like they hit the bull’s-eye for now, but what happens if that optimism fades?”

Aaron Schindler, a financial planner at Wealth Advisory Group in New York, recommends keeping as much as 30% of your portfolio in cash or a safe short-term bond fund, such as Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index.

Keeping some dry powder also gives you room to buy once the economic outlook becomes clearer, says Ms. Shalett.

For the bond segment of your portfolio, history shows that U.S. Treasurys have tended to pay off nicely following a central-bank intervention, no matter how stocks performed.

In the two years after September 1936, for example, when the country was in the depths of the Depression, U.S. stocks fell 16.6% in real terms, while Treasury bonds rose 5.6%.

The biggest potential for gains in fixed income could be in bonds of emerging-market countries, says Mr. Durham. The iShares JPMorgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF dropped 1.3% in November, but in the last week it has gained nearly 2%, and is up 5.7% this year. Mr. Durham says investor flows into emerging-market funds, which his firm tracks, suggest that trend could continue.

“[This year's performance] is a sign that they’re seen as a safe haven from what’s happening in Europe and other developed markets,” he says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204397704577074121282629882.html 

Related articles

• George Soros: Global Financial System In ‘Self-Reinforcing Process Of Disintegration’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Art Cashin: There’s A ‘New Theory’ On Wall Street For Last Week’s Global Coordinated Central Bank Intervention (businessinsider.com)