No flight from risk just yet

My thinking is that they can't.

of course they aren't. But risk isn't just a question of paying back a loan, its what that loan's anticipated future value will be in the international monetary markets.

And right now, the currencies of Australia and New Zealand are considered "over valued", and an eventual adjustment downward is anticipated which will result in lower returns relative to other currencies.

The other thing is that everything is now hyper-short term. Its not as if people who buy 20 year bonds issued by Columbia are stuck with them for 20 years --- and supposedly the people who buy and sell these securities are paying enough attention to places like Columbia to minimize their potential losses....

and as we've seen with Bear-Stearns, brokerages are more than willing to protect wealthy individuals and banks who make risky investments by tranferring losses on high risk investments to low risk investments.

But you already know all this, don't you?

I guess I sorta knew it. But you put it so well.

As for this: >>brokerages are more than willing to protect wealthy individuals and banks who make risky investments by tranferring losses on high risk investments to low risk investments