America's beer envy

I'm in Australia for a long weekend (I married into a family of pilots. Apparently they do this sort of thing). Stick with me. The Aussie government reported yesterday that 24,500 jobs were created in October, and unemployment will likely top off below 6 percent. Not exactly an apples to oranges comparison with the United States, but I'm envious nonetheless. They have the good beer, now they have the jobs.

It fits with what Peter Schiff told us for the December issue. It's not a V recovery, a W recovery or anything else. Sure, we'll have quarters of growth, but we had individual quarters of growth during the Great Depression. The overall long-term trend still turned out to be disastrous.

Schiff – pundit, author and president of Euro Pacific Capital – believes (economically speaking) America's best days are behind her. No way to recover from the destruction of the dollar and the inflation that's sure to follow. We'll take a huge hit, while others – like Australia – will not. It's not that he's unpatriotic. It's just an unemotional look at the numbers. It is what it is, and it appears to be happening.