But if it stabilizes, that could eventually remove a tailwind for some companies and investments. A weaker dollar has juiced returns for U.S. investors in overseas stocks and bonds. Moreover, foreign profits among U.S. multinationals have translated into bigger gains at home. If the dollar steadies, such benefits would recede. (be careful what you ask for, this is all that is saving Wall Street's pumpkin)********
Now for a very interesting WSJ story on attempts to buy up farmland in the other great global food basket - Russia/Ukraine/former satellite states of USSR - I think this asset class will be a tremendous investment over a 30-40 year time frame as arable land disappears across the globe due to climate/urbanization - but you'll have to check the blog in 3 decades to see if I'm correct.

• The vast collectives that fed the Soviet Union are now a patchwork of tiny gardens, fields and vacant lots. But combined, they could help feed the world: Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have fertile yet untilled land the size of Idaho.
• If someone could just stitch the land back together and create modern farms, agronomists say, the vast spaces north and east of the Black Sea could generate an extra 115 million metric tons of wheat per year -- 20% of the world's current production.
• Richard Spinks is trying to do just that. The 41-year-old Briton has literally been going door-to-door, leasing small plots of land from hundreds of thousands of poor farmers in western Ukraine. His company, Landkom International PLC, has planted wheat, barley and rapeseed on a combined 25,000 acres. Landkom expects to reap its first big harvest this fall.
• .... as technology gains have slowed, the search for additional arable land has intensified. That's created an opening for entrepreneurs with visions of re-collectivizing the land in former communist countries and rebooting production.

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Last, just a downer story from the NYTimes - we don't think about all the implications of the housing bust but just like we have foreclosures on homes, we now have "auctions" on people's stuff in public storage. A very sad state we have gotten ourselves in. Oh well, the key thing is the past 5 years we have enriched 100s of the top NYC bankers, and create multi millionaires out of them to create these toxic waste dumps of faulty mortgage loans. And that's really the important thing to come out of our capitalist system (you know, capitalist on the way up, socialist on the way down). And when said multi millionaires fall on hard times, our tax dollars and Federal Reserve are waiting in the wings to keep them propped up - unlike those silly peons who have public storage. Always a silver lining; the great American transfer of wealth continues i.e. the "anti-Robin Hood" country.

• The foreclosure crisis is hitting yet another American locale: the self-storage center.
• As they lose their homes, people are turning to these humble cinderblock and sheet-metal boxes to store their stuff. But some people cannot keep up with their storage bills any better than they could handle their mortgage payments, and storage companies are auctioning off their property for a pittance.
• The auctioneer, Blair Auction & Appraisal, has been conducting sales at self-storage facilities in the Midwest for more than a decade. “If a site used to have 10 auctions, these days it has 15 or 20,” said Wayne Blair, the owner. At one site in Detroit, he auctioned off the contents of 45 units.
• Bill Martin, a 50-year-old former manager in the technology industry, lost his house in the Southern California community of Lake Forest last August. “Storage has my hopes in it,” said Mr. Martin, who sleeps on a foldout bed in his mother’s guest room. “I don’t tell anyone this, but at least once a week I go over and look at my couch, my refrigerator, my TV stand, my mattress and realize I did have a life, and maybe there’s a way to go back to it.” (just sad)

Well folks, it is just a sad state - grown men in the Midwest needing to move back home to make ends meet (Jan 16: Interesting Human Economic Toll Piece in NYTimes), now grown men in the West Coast... the pooring of America continues... living standards continue to erode for many who don't have much of a voice - slowly but surely (Do the Bottom 80% of Americans Stand a Chance)

I eagerly await the "trickle down" economics theory to begin working for the vast majority in this country (I believe that theory is, cut taxes for the ultra wealthy so they can create new businesses full of $9-$11 service jobs for the rest of society). So far, not so good... "trickle on" yes... "trickle down" - not so much. We'll just have to wait patiently for the point where social acrimony reached a tipping point.