A “Lost Decade” doesn’t have to translate into lost profit opportunities.As the global financial crisis continues to escalate, the United States is increasingly facing the prospect of a long malaise that could easily eclipse Japan’s Lost Decade of the 1990s in both duration and depth.

Welcome to the latest offshoot of the subprime-mortgage debacle: A burgeoning U.S. pension-fund crisis. Since the global financial crisis struck last fall, the largest 1,500 U.S. public companies have lost a combined $280 billion from their pension funds.

Brazilian stocks as measured by the country’s Bovespa benchmark stock index has fallen 20% from its May 20 record, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to give up on Latin America’s largest economy. Brazil still has plenty to offer, and with stock valuations low, it’s a good time to go bargain hunting.

Editor’s Note: BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP) and Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) are the twin mining pillars of the Australian Securities Exchange. But which one is the better investment? Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia explains why BHP does more to hold up the S&P/ASX 200 — Australia’s main market-cap weighted index.

Steelmakers throughout Asia cringed earlier this week when they heard the news that Aussie mining giant Rio Tinto PLC (ADR: pBut getting Rio out of the way was only half the battle, because now steelmakers are forced to confront BHP Billiton Ltd. (ADR: a href="http://finance.google.com/finance?q=bhp&hl=en" onclick="s_objectID=" finance?q="bhp&hl=en_1";return">BHP) and its chief executive,

Australia’s minerals industry is booming.

But Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia sees two threats on the horizon that could derail Australia’s commodities boom. One possibility is that Australia’s boom will end where America’s depression begins. The other, more likely, scenario is an inflationary melt up.

The extent of the boom was underlined yesterday by an Australian government report predicting export earnings from commodities would rise a whopping 40% $201bn in the financial year to June 2009, led by a 48% surge in mineral exports to A$178bn — the biggest rise in four decades.

Baosteel Group Corp., China’s largest steel producer, will pay $4.2 billion in cash for an 80% stake in a new Guangzhou-based steel mill that will merge two rivals, Shaoguan Iron & Steel Group and Guangzhou Iron & Steel Group.

China is already the world’s top steel consumer and producer, churning out one-third of the global supply. This newly formed company, Guangdong Iron & Steel Group Corp., will boost Baosteel’s capacity by 33% to 40 million tons.

There are a lot of things we don’t know about the global economy. How high will the oil price go? How many billions more will be lost in the U.S. housing bust? Will the Reserve Bank Raise interest rates again?

Global investors seeking undervalued markets might want to look at Russia, China, India, Malaysia, South Korea or Brazil. And if they want to avoid overvalued markets, they’d be best to eschew Italy, the United States, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, or Germany.

The price action in the Aussie share market is starting to look like a pinball game.