By Keith Fitz-Gerald
Editor, Geiger Index
Investment Director
Money Morning Investment News/The Money Map Report

It’s easy to be gloomy when it comes to the financial markets.

It’s even easier to write off China.

After all, the Red Dragon’s markets have collapsed by 70%, businesses are shutting down, lead-laced toys and poisoned medicines have tainted the minds of Western consumers, there’s a growing gap between the rich and the poor, inflationary clouds seem to be gathering, and overbuilding is a growing concern.

And that’s just a partial list.

The situation has gotten bad enough that China’s economic growth rate may slow from 9.6% this year to 7.75% in 2009. For those who are struggling to find the “next” profit opportunity at a time when the U.S. economy is straining to maintain any bit of forward momentum possible, those statistics should serve as a gigantic neon arrow over a lighted sign that reads: “Invest Here.”

Simply and succinctly put: U.S. investors are unlikely to ever see this kind of growth here at home ever again.

On the other hand, China is much like America was at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Sure, there are problems – and, admittedly, it’s easy to focus on a whole slew of them right now – but there’s still all kinds of potential, too.

If you’ve ever been to China, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You literally can feel the broad sense that the best is yet to come. Contrast that with the United States or Western Europe, where hand wringing, and finger pointing are the norm.

Why is that?

Because, as I mentioned a few weeks back, Beijing “gets it.” And China’s central government is taking major, decisive steps to ensure that China’s people do, too, an admirable example of the kind of leadership that Washington’s self-absorbed politicians seem no longer capable of delivering. Most recently, as Money Morning reported, Beijing approved a $586 billion stimulus package. In an era of trillion-dollar bailouts, that was almost too small to register on the old Richter scale here in America. But it should have.

If America were to put in place a stimulus plan that represented the same proportionate outlay that Beijing’s will for China, we’d be talking about an infusion of nearly $1.83 trillion, or 10.89 times more than the positively puny $168 billion stimulus that went into the hands of U.S. taxpayers last year. And it would probably dwarf anything that President-elect Barack Obama is contemplating right now.

Think of the pile-driver-like effect a stimulus of that size would have on U.S. consumer spending – which, after all, accounts for 70% of what the American economy does. Billions of dollars in loans could be paid off and consumer debt retired. In that sense, such a massive capital infusion could do what U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his Bailout Boys can’t achieve. The Beijing-like infusion would provide a needed recapitalization of the financial markets – without rewarding those who got us into this mess in the first place. Most important of all, it would help the folks who are caught in the middle – us consumers.

What makes this particularly ironic is that the nature and composition of China’s stimulus program suggests that Beijing’s communist government understands consumer psychology and capitalist financial markets better than Western governments do right now – particularly the psychology.
For example, because of the credit crisis and relentless coverage of the flagging economy, consumers are scared stiff at the moment. And understandably so. They see factory orders declining and jobless claims spiking to their highest levels in 25 years. They read the news that retail stalwart Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) – is lowering expectations. So consumers opt to hoard money out of fear, rather than spend it, and that’s what really kicks a recession into gear.

So what will China’s stimulus package do that ours won’t?

For starters, Beijing’s stimulus is designed to encourage spending, rather than reward malfeasance, as our bailout plan is doing. Further, there’s no buying up of bad debt. Instead, there’s an implied recapitalization that will take place through growth. But most importantly, Beijing is sending an ultra-clear message to its people – we will be here for you and we will help you directly – and that’s stoked the confidence in every Chinese contact I’ve talked to since the plan was announced.

And that uptick in confidence is warranted, given all that China is planning, including:

• Improved environmental-protection projects, including new sewage and waste treatment projects.
• More low-rent and affordable-housing projects.
• Distributed healthcare projects, including hospitals, clinics and medical equipment, particularly in the historically ignored rural regions.
• New highways that will more than double China’s navigable area and that will account for nearly 40 million new jobs in the next 24 months.
• New railways and railway-related projects, which will create 6 million jobs during 2009 alone and more after that.

Beijing’s stimulus is geared toward creating 3.0% to 5.0% gross domestic product (GDP) growth to augment the 3.0% domestic-consumption activity, for a total 2009 target growth rate of at least 7.0%.

While China’s stimulus is designed to create valuable growth, the U.S. package is simply concerned with plugging leaks. China’s package is forward-looking, while ours is not.

Clearly though, the effects won’t be immediate and Beijing knows that. And that’s why, based on historical trends, we expect it to be about six months before the money really begins to work its way through the system. Look for an uptick in Chinese demand in late 2009, and acceleration in 2010.
Look, also, for the worldwide ripple effects, particularly for commodities producers and exporters that do business with China, and the infrastructure providers. This package will stop many of these sector skids, and we can look to see them rebound in earnest once demand kicks in and the Renminbi (yuan) start to flow.

Let’s hope that the rest of the world gets the message. Washington’s current bailout plan isn’t large enough to restart the global markets and it sure as heck isn’t large enough to recharge investor psychology.

But China’s plan is. And that’s what Washington should be looking at.

News and Related Story Links:

• Money Morning News Analysis:
  Massive China Stimulus is Viewed as an Attempt to Help the West.
• Wikipedia:
  Industrial Revolution.
• Wikipedia:
  Pile Driver.

By Keith Fitz-Gerald
Contributing Editor

Whenever I’m faced with a market like this one – rocky and volatile, with hidden wildcards just waiting to trip us up – I can’t help but think about my late grandmother, successful amateur investor Virginia Gruner, and the warning she would issue in just these situations: “Hold onto your bippies!”

As I sit here and stare at my trading screens this afternoon (Monday) – watching as central banks around the world inject billions into the global economy in an effort to blunt the effects of the spiraling credit crisis – I can just hear my grandmother issue her ever-so-familiar warning.

The Greatest Investor I’ve Ever Known

You see, my grandmother was a super-successful amateur investor.  She’d spent most of her adult life managing her household, the wife of a highly successful insurance-industry executive (my grandfather). When her husband died, my grandmother found that her family’s own finances were in disarray. So with characteristic commitment, and with a resolve I always admired, she set out to become a successful investor. She became one of the smartest individual investors most of us will ever see – and, actually, one of the best investors of any kind I have ever known.

My grandmother then set out to pass that “gift” along – to me. Starting when I was a teenager, she made sure that I always had the entire Value Line investment research series, and annual subscriptions to such leading publications as Business Week and Forbes. She wasn’t forcing this on me, mind you, but rather was sharing it with me – and in a way that made me want to learn all that I could, and be as successful at this wonderfully engaging pursuit as my grandmother.

Yesterday’s late-afternoon trading patterns suggest that her bit of wisdom may somehow be fitting to keep in mind over the next few days. I’m now hearing from traders based both here in the United States and around Europe that the $275 billion injected into the world economies by the global central banks may not be enough.

And, yet, Asia’s traders seem placated.
 
So, what gives?

I honestly don’t know. But here’s what my experience tells me should be happening – as well as what’s actually happening.

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The Global Realities

Somehow, the Euros and Americans don’t trust the system. They think that Monday’s rally is nothing more than a continuation of the short covering and limited bottom fishing that began Friday on the heels of nearly $275 billion in central bank liquidity injections

They’ve got a bad case of: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” And investors seemingly want the ECB and Fed to drop rates as a sign of good faith that things are truly behind us. Yesterday, in fact, I saw no fewer than 20 different news stories, research reports, and market essays from various people suggesting that a “Fed rate cut is in the bag” – which makes me suspect all the more that it isn’t.

Asian traders, on the other hand, seem to think that the massive amounts of money shot into the system was enough to fix the problem.

It’s the way that the Asian markets are trading that leads me to draw this conclusion – that, of course, plus the 20-plus years I’ve spent in and around the Asian markets.

The Japanese and Chinese in particular have a different cultural framework than we rely on here in the West. As a result, the Japanese have a sort of implicit trust in the government as a benevolent entity while the Chinese view it as a strict leader to be obeyed…maneuvered, but obeyed nonetheless. There are, of course, finer points to each but those are more academic than anything else.

In more practical terms, based on how the two camps (the West vs. Asia) appear to be divided in their trading philosophy right now, what we as individual investors are left with is a dichotomy: Roughly half the world’s financial system wants more “liquidity,” while the other half seems content with what it’s got.

Really Time to Go Global

So, who’s right and what does it mean for us?

That remains to be seen. I’m personally of the opinion that we have a long way to go before the extent of the damage is truly recognized. There will undoubtedly be some big names on the chopping block in the weeks to come as more light is shed on this messy credit situation. Some of these revelations will have been anticipated. But others will be huge surprises, and could well roil the markets.

Either way, this suggests to me that individual investors have yet another reason to focus at least part of their financial strategies on global investing (Wharton Professor Jeremy Siegel recently said that an international allotment of under 40% was a “disservice,” as well as a recipe for substantial underperformance).

That said, it’s clearly not enough any more to diversify by country because most of the countries, as so many people found out last week, are inextricably linked at the central banking level.

Therefore, it is vitally important to take a different approach that both lessens your risk and heightens your potential returns. Part of that approach includes lining up your money with the virtually unstoppable trends of our time. The other part suggests “an offensive defense” may be more appropriate now more than ever.

Last week’s financial shenanigans have clearly changed the rules of the game – yet again.

As I reason this all through, I can’t help but consider what my grandmother would say about this situation. The best revenge, of course, is to take advantage of all possible profit opportunities. But we all know that these next few weeks could be highly volatile, which either connotes danger or opportunity – depending upon your viewpoint.

So brace yourself for still more volatility (“hold onto your bippies!”). Then capitalize on whatever opportunities the financial markets throw at you. Look especially closely at global investment opportunities, but don’t be afraid to be opportunistic domestically, either. Be bold, but not reckless.

And have at it!

Good Investing to us all.

 Keith Fitz-Gerald

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