Charles Payne, founder and CEO of Wall Street Strategies Corporation, said in a keynote address at last week's Las Vegas Money Show that Americans are taking much too negative a view of our prospects-and it's reflected in the way we're investing.
Hatred of America is on the rise-and unfortunately it's on the rise among Americans.
Outside of the threat of terrorism the biggest threat to America is the internal effort to sap our pride and our will. Incredibly it seems we have been following the lead of public opinion in other nations to dictate how we should feel about ourselves.
While many are basking in the deterioration of Iraq and bragging about not supporting the war from the start, the aim of the war was to get rid of terror and tyranny. The bottom line is the world has forgotten the sacrifices America has made, and America must resist the urge not to step up to the plate for fear of not offending our friends.
To be sure there are some legitimate problems we need to face in this country. Our [educational] system is bogged down with children who are being passed without the proper skill sets. I think the educational situation is epidemic; the reality is our kids really aren't prepared to go to college in the first place. Bureaucracy must be ripped out of schools, curriculum must go back to the basics, we must stop coddling kids with easy courses.
Economic justice-I'm not in favor of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but I do see something wrong with the average CEO of publicly traded companies making 179x what the average worker makes. Healthcare is something we need to address, but socialized medicine is not the answer, and racism is still a problem that no one really likes to talk about.
For all the hype that the rest of the world is receiving these days, the fact is the US is still the straw that stirs the drink. Our GDP is still number one, ahead of the EU, which has 100 million more people than us and ahead of China, which has 1 billion more.
The lack of faith in America has been a contributing factor to the investing habits of individual investors. According to ICI, Americans have put more funds into investments primarily overseas every month since November of 2004, and in the last 12 months a net of $2.57 billion has been taken out of funds for US investments while Americans have invested $131.5 billion in funds pegged to the overseas markets.
It's time to turn back the tide of self-hatred and remember who we are: we're a democracy committed to getting better and better, we are the most generous nation in the world, we have the best route to upward mobility, we have the most vibrant middle class in the world, we have freedom of enterprise, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to dream, freedom to complain and even freedom to hate America.
I want to say God bless America, don't hate America, embrace it, and get in the stock market if you're not in it-I think this rally has three more years to go.
