Is it just me or has the news that an American attending the Olympics in China was killed by a Chinese been swept under the rug already? Could you imagine what would happen if a Chinese attending the Olympics held here were killed? Are we that big of a weenie country already?br /br /No, I am not straying into politics as this blog is about money and portfolios. But think about it – the USA up to its eyeballs in debt, at the mercy, so it seems, of oil producing nations, and is for sale to the rest of the world thanks to our cheap currency.br /br /Don’t tell me the dollar has bottomed and the world is A-OK for American business. The word “dramatic” was used to describe it but give me a break. Look at this chart and tell me how significant it really was.br /br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0kPlZMvFr70/SJ-LKlek-hI/AAAAAAAAAD0/NSDmRYKvBo8/s1600-h/chart1aug10.png”img style=”margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;” src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0kPlZMvFr70/SJ-LKlek-hI/AAAAAAAAAD0/NSDmRYKvBo8/s320/chart1aug10.png” alt=”” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5233054306003122706″ border=”0″ //abr /Now how does it look? Real dramatic, right? The final peak of this chart took place in early 2002 and last week’s span style=”font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;”dramatic /spanrally is barely noticeable.br /br /I’m not saying that the dollar has not bottomed. All I’m saying is that we are searching for anything nice to say and behind it all we seem not to want to piss off the Chinese.br /br /Now, that is power.br /br /Here’s one more tidbit thanks to the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. The power on planet Earth moves from East to West and back again in a more or less 500-year cycle. Asia dominated a millennium ago. Then Europe rose to power and ceded it to the USA. And now where is it already settling?br /br /What’s in your international portfolio?