Obviously, in light of the Israeli-Turkey conflict last night, this post is going to have a lot to do with geopolitical instability and the need to own tangible assets/commodities- I don’t diverge from my basic theme very often. I dislike perma-bulls who think buying oil at any price is a good idea, but it definitely seems like we’re sliding into a period of uncertainty and it would be wise to have some upside exposure.
Rather than talking about the current Israeli crisis, which I’m not nearly qualified to discuss, I’m going to post CNN’s link as a surrogate for US Media, the BBC’s article for the UK Media, and Debkafile, the Israeli Military news service’s article.
This is obviously very scary stuff, and the fears of retaliation from extremist groups is definitely something I’m concerned about, both for Israeli citizens as well as the citizens of the US, Israel’s most prominent ally. With rising Middle East political tension, gold and oil come to mind as suitable safety investments (although the US Equity futures are up about half a percent, the dollar is down, and oil is only up 50 cents- hardly a strong reaction from the markets).
Meanwhile, Zerohedge has done its best in the past 48 hours to terrify me as well, posting links about Israel positioning nuclear subs off the cost of Iran, a guest post about impending hyperinflation, and another guest post about a deteriorating Chinese economy (although this post talks about oil and base metals taking a hit, which makes sense, but I still think there’s more upside there than not).
Between all of this, BP’s lackluster efforts to control the oil spill, currently reading Roubini’s book, and having the book Game Over still lingering in my mind, all I can say is: I’m terrified, and want to own as much oil, gold, copper, water- whatever people need to survive, because it all sounds like bad news these days.
