Cory, FWIW it’s not really about not wanting to buy other companies, it’s about buying back their own stock to keep their EPS up as well as their stock price – which is al about executive pay. These companies are borrowing in the bond market and buying their stock.

Big demand for USD. Yes many foreign nations that have borrowed big time from the US will have to repatriate loans as a much higher cost due to the rise in the green back. This is creating more demand for the USD…
The gold bugs got everything wrong..

USD at 120,will mean emerging market debt defaults, very strong deflation in US.
For a while Gold will get hit.
But look out if these things play out. If you think you have seen QE, think again.
When the fed is faced with this scenario, it will open the money spigots wider than even bernanke could imagine.
Thats when you will see Gold take a moon shot.
My bet is the fed will make a move long before USD 120 is anywhere near.
USD 99 is hurting earnings now.

I want to ask Rick what he thinks about the possible reversal of the generational downtrend in the US dollar.

For 45 years, we have had typical US dollar bull and bear market cycles:

8 years down 1971-1979
6 years up 1979-1985
7 years down 1985-1992
9 years up 1992-2001
7 years down 2001-2008
9 years up? 2008-2017?

T hat is about an average 8 year bull and bear cycle.

It sounds like Rick is forecasting that the last 45 years action in he US dollar is not going to be followed and the normal cycle is going to break.

In that case, it seems that it might be more likely to break to the upside if he says the up-cycle will continue for another 5 years, that gives a dollar top in 2020 and a 12 year bull market in the dollar!

The reason for this could be that we are in a once in a century deflation event like the one in the 1930s. So perhaps we shouldn’t expect the dollar index to behave as it has in the past 45 years because they are irrelevant to the current events

This has all kinds of implications:

One might be that the dollar could have turned up into a secular generational bull market in a break from the past 45 years of its making lower lows.

It also would imply secular bear market in the Euro contrary to European currency strength versus the USD in recent decades. Perhaps it would go hand in hand with disintegration of the Euro and the European Union whose integration was coincident with its generational bull market ending in 2008.

It could also imply deflation and a long period of it, not atypical in a credit contraction after an exceptional financial bubble.

That might put an end also to the commodities cycles that tend to run inverse to the US dollar, so perhaps the commodities bear market has further to run and looking at recent lows like the 2008 lows or 2001 lows in commodities as a guide is irrelevant.

It might also imply that there will be no continuation of a secular gold bull market perhaps for many years but perhaps some kind of trading range at relatively subdued levels for many years.

Rick, strong dollar is good for US consumers. No doubt about it. However, it is very harmful to the manufacturing industry and exporters. Even McDonald is counted as manufacturing now, the manufacturing is still declining. Higher dollar will hollow out the domestic producers. What do you see US industry handles this hostile environment if the strong dollar goes on for a long time? without strong manufacturing industry, there is no way to stay at the top of the world even making weaponry requires a broad industry base to support.