The big question preoccupying the talkers at CNBC is whether the post-March upturn is the beginning of a new bull market or only a pause in a bear market that will last for years. Don’t obsess over figuring out the answer. Markets are always perverse and unpredictable. Instead of trying to time your next buys and sells, think about what is going to happen over the next decade and how you will cope with it. You should be thinking about the purchasing value of the dollar.

Dremen, like your Notes editors, believes we are in for a bout of “wild inflation” – something along the lines of what we saw from 1979 to 1982. (For those of you too young to remember, this period saw the CPI rise 13% a year and long-dated US Treasurys yield as much as 15%.) Why this dire outlook? This, again, from Dremen:

Simply because our Treasury and its counterparts in other countries are printing money around the clock. They are also printing bonds, and with the same objective: reviving stagnant economies. The Keynesian belief that large fiscal stimulus is crucial to ending an economic downturn is prevalent among policymakers worldwide. No democratic government could stay in power these days if it didn’t undertake countermeasures against unemployment, the possibility of deflation and the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. It is inevitable that all this stimulus will be followed at some point by a period of rapidly rising prices.Central banks, including our not-so-omniscient Federal Reserve, will again fail to take the punch bowl away from the party soon enough, keeping stimulative polices going far past the point when unemployment has turned a corner and the financial debacle is behind us. Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed boss Bernanke are trapped by politics and events. They make pronouncements downplaying the inflation threat, but inflation will hit like a tsunami within three years, maybe sooner..

So what can you do about this threat to your savings? First, sell long bonds. When inflation hits long-bond prices are going to plummet as yields skyrocket. Remember, bond market crashes can be as bad as stock market crashes.

Dremen also recommends repositioning your portfolio with heavier weightings in oil, natural resources and cyclical stocks… and cutting back on utilities and consumer staples. If you believe, like we do, that a crash in stocks is coming, hold off on buying stocks until values come off their current highs – buy the dips.

The third weapon in your armory against inflation is real estate. Dremen reckons real estate will be “one of the best investments in the years ahead.” Remember Buffett’s great contrarian maxim: “Be fearful when other are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

Also keep in mind Steve Sjuggerud’s rule of thumb for successful investing: buy assets that are cheap, hated and on an upswing.

This from a recent interview with Steve Forbes, which you can watch in full on Forbes.com

But then even buying Treasuries, you have the risk of under-performing inflation at today’s rate that you’re getting on Treasuries, right? Certainly with today’s yield, relative to the stock market, I would think Treasuries would be a terrible investment. In fact, we’re short an ETF that owns 20-year Treasuries because we think rates are going up. My point, though, is you can do one of two things.

Generally speaking, to the extent that you can, you can own bonds and stocks, and then within stocks you can pick stocks on your own or you can own a mutual fund or an index fund. I think that picking stocks and doing better than the market over time is very, very, very difficult. Most professionals can’t do it and most individual investors can’t do it. Human beings are hardwired to do precisely the wrong thing, which is buy things when they’re high and popular, and sell them when they’re low and unpopular. And of course to be a successful investor you have to do the complete opposite. I think most average people, who don’t have the time and the training to pick stocks, would be better off in mutual funds or index funds.

Tilson is right that we are “hardwired” to buy high and sell low. That’s why here at Notes we follow only contrarian investors – those that take advantage of the crowd’s uncanny ability to do the wrong thing when it comes to their money. As our commodities investing guru Rick Rule puts it, “You’re either a contrarian or a victim.” Amen to that…

Bond investors are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief. Now that investors are waking up to the fact that a recovery is not “around the corner” after all, the yield on 10-year T-Notes is dropping and bond prices are rising again.

As long as investors have an appetite for low-yielding Treasurys (10-year Notes were yielding 3.53% yesterday), the government will have a tough time pushing its “green shoots” fairytale.

We challenge even the best paid of President Obama’s economic spin doctors to find the silver lining in the following two recent data points. This from MoneyMorning.com:

1. Unemployment claims unexpectedly rose yesterday, as the number of US workers filing new claims jumped by 15,000 in the week ended June 20 to a seasonally adjusted 627,000, the Labor Department reported. The four-week moving average of initial claims, a less volatile measure, rose to 617,250 from 616,750, signaling the US job market is stagnant.
2. US gross domestic product (GDP) contracted at a 5.5% annual rate in the first quarter after plunging at a 6.3% pace in the fourth quarter of 2008, the Commerce Department said yesterday (Thursday). That means the US economy just went through its worst eight-month period in more than 60 years, according to MarketWatch. The government last month estimated GDP fell at a 5.7% pace in the quarter ended March 31.

If you in any doubt about the dangers of relying on the mainstream media for your economic and financial information, here’s how the BBC, Britain’s state-sponsored news agency, had this to say about the worst eight-month contraction of the US economy in more than 60 years.

US economy better than expected

The US economy shrank at an annualised rate of 5.5% in the first three months of 2009, better than previously thought, government figures show.

This is pitiful. And it’s clear evidence that governments and mainstream media outlets really do believe that people are too stupid to notice what’s going on in the economy. Don’t be suckered. This kind of nonsense is dangerous: listen to it and you could get wiped out as an investor.

If you want to know why the economy is in the ditch… and ain’t “bouncing back” anytime soon, look no further than this chart. It shows the total level of equity in household real estate from 1952 to 2009. (Hat tip, The Big Picture.)

As currencies expert Alex Merk of Merk Mutual Funds wrote recently, “Russian President Medvedev suggests the dollar is on its way out; Russian Finance minister Kudrin says there is no substitute for the dollar. The Chinese see a need to diversify out of the dollar; the Japanese say their trust in the dollar is unshakable.” What’s a poor investor to think?

Merk says Russia’s and China’s – along with fellow BRIC nations India and Brazil – concern over the stability of the dollar and their need to diversify out of dollar-denominated assets is a strategic perspective. As he rightly points out, “There is simply no substitute for the U.S. dollar today; no other market is as deep and liquid, or able to absorb the cash that needs to be deployed by central banks around the world.”

Does this mean the dollar is safe and sound? Not by a long shot. This, again, from Merk:

[We] believe countries around the world are racing to put the “tools” in place to be less dependent on the US dollar. In Asia, for example, after the 1997/1998 financial crisis, Asian countries realized they needed to bolster their countries’ reserves. In the latest crisis, they realized that holding almost exclusively U.S. dollar reserves was a risky strategy. The solution is all too obvious, namely to develop domestic markets. This isn’t just about developing domestic consumption to create a more “balanced” world economy, this is about creating domestic infrastructures, fixed income markets in particular. Currently, many global investors invest in Asian markets by buying US dollar denominated securities plus derivatives. This makes Asian issuers – governments, supranational and corporate issuers alike highly dependent on the US dollar. This will only change if global investors have confidence in the stability and maturity of the local markets. The message to “CEOs” of countries around the world is to show that they are open and ready for business. Such trust is not earned overnight. In Asia, Singapore is a leader; not surprisingly, Singapore has a healthy domestic fixed income market. China is on its way, but needs to do more to provide access to its domestic markets.

It other words, global diversification away from the dollar may not happen today or tomorrow. But the risk to the dollar – and to long-term US economic growth – is real.

Notes readers may want to do something about diversifying their portfolio allocation to hedge against this outcome. As usual we recommend considering beefing up the hard assets side of your portfolio and adding TIPS into the mix, too.

If you’re serious about investing in hard assets, we highly recommend you read this special investor report from Crisis Trader editor Christian DeHaemer on what he calls the “Great Red Oil War.”

Of course, you could also choose to trade currencies directly. For information on how to follow master forex trader Bill Jenkins to currency trading profits, click here.

And the green shoots brigade gained a firmer hold on investor sentiment. It has become okay to say that the global economy is out of the woods and that the rally in US stocks could be the beginning of a new bull.

Is this optimism justifiable? This is the question we’ll attempt to answer in today’s Notes.

“The whole credit collapse and the recession must have been a hoax,” writes our favorite underground analyst David Rosenberg at Gluskin Sheff.

Rosie is talking about the latest Investors’ Intelligence survey. It shows bullish sentiment at 47.7% (versus 42.5% the week before) and bearish sentiment all the way down to 23.3% (from 25.3% the week before).

Meanwhile, net inflows into US equity funds have been positive now for 12 consecutive weeks, with a total of $2.83 in fresh capital pouring in the week before last. Another sign of exuberance, as Rosie points out, for contrarian investors.

Maybe the bulls haven’t been paying attention to the catastrophe in exports. This from Rosie’s Friday missive:

The latest data on China’s outbound shipments showed renewed hints of slowing. Same for Korea. German exports plunged 4.8% in April and are off 28.7% from a year ago. Canadian export volumes sank 5.1% in April — and this transcended the problems in the auto sector — on top of 2.3% slide in March, taking Canada into a deficit position of $178 million in what is a vivid sign of a hugely overvalued loonie. U.S. export volumes also dropped 4.3% in April after a 0.5% decline in March, taking the YoYo trend down to a new all-time low of -20.4% from -13.8% in March.

Maybe the bulls just don’t care. This has been our suspicion here at Notes since the current rally US stocks kicked off in March. Let us explain…

The credit crunch and the collapse of onetime Wall Street darling Lehman Brothers last September spooked investors bad. Fear spread over a 1930s style great deleveraging, and stocks plunged as a result.

But are we really experiencing a great deleveraging? The upsurge in US stocks signals that we’re not… as does the more recent rise in crude oil prices. A deleveraging is by nature deflationary. But the rise in base metals, stocks and oil reveal that traders and investors are counting on deflation’s nemesis – and the nemesis of earners and savers – inflation.

We’re learning the lessons of history not by studying it but by repeating it. Warns underground investor Bob Carver over at MarketClues.com:

When the Bankster Debt Bubble burst in 2007 and 2008, it was popular for most to think that a great period of de-leveraging had begun. This happened in the Thirties and led to the Great Depression. It wasn’t pretty, but debt was either written off or paid off. The country learned a big lesson about banksters and how their bad decisions blew up the economy. Once those who had learned those lessons were gone, we had to re-learn those lessons, not by studying history, but by repeating it.”

Or, have we learned the lessons? Today, we not only have not learned the lessons of the Bankster Bubble, we are repeating and expanding the bubble of debt. Instead of a Bankster Bubble, we have a Government Debt Bubble that subsumes the Bankster Bubble and expands it. There is no de-leveraging going on. We are simply blowing a bigger bubble, waiting for the day when our lenders cut off the flow of funds.

Total debt is still rising sharply, according to the Fed’s Flow of Funds Report. In 2008, Federal debt grew 24% and in the first quarter of 2009 grew by 22.6% at an annualized rate. Household and business debt was virtually unchanged, while state and local government debt is rising at a 4.9% annual rate in 2009. Don’t take our word for it. OptionARMaggedon did some charts which show that the debt bubble is still expanding. The last two years were simply a sneak preview of what’s coming when the, by then much larger, debt bubble blows up in the future. The longer this goes on, the worse it will be. The public is sitting idly by while this pile of explosives is being built higher and higher, just waiting for the day when someone with a match lights the fuse.

Put simply, the only way out of a debt induced depression is to pay down debt or write it off. Leveraging up only delays the inevitable.

Given this “leveraging up,” it should come as no surprise that oil prices have risen sharply recently. The black goo is now trading at over $70 a barrel, just off its nine-month high of $73.20. The rate of gain is astonishing: oil prices have risen 100% since their $38 low in January.

Underground investor David Fessler at Investment U recommends four ways to profit from oil’s price moves (three long and one short).

• 1. Certainly one of the big drillers like TransOcean  (NYSE: RIG) is a great long-term play on rising oil prices, as their shares closely mirror the rise and fall of the commodity itself. Shares of the drillers have been absolutely punished, and TransOcean is off nearly 50% from its 52-week high.
  2. The United States Oil Fund LP  (NYSE: USO) is an ETF designed to track West Texas Intermediate (light, sweet crude oil) prices. The fund invests in futures contracts for crude, heating oil, gasoline and other petroleum-based fuels.
  3. If you don’t mind some potential added volatility, PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Long ETN  (NYSE: DXO) is a long-leveraged Exchange Traded Note available to investors. It’s designed to track the performance of certain crude oil futures contracts, plus the returns from investing in three-month Treasuries.
  4. But if you’re a bit more active in your trading, or if you feel oil is ready for a pullback, you might consider a short approach. PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Short ETN (NYSE: DTO) is designed to do just the opposite of DXO if you feel that our current rally in oil prices is overdone. For the reasons above, I don’t believe that’s the direction we’re going, but I think DTO is one of the better ways to play a short approach to oil.

Hedge fund legend Julian Robertson is betting the farm against long-dated US Treasurys. As Notes readers will be aware, we have been banging the drum on the vulnerability of long-dated US debt for over a month now. But Robertson, of Tiger Management fame, has a different way to make this short long-term Treasurys play (hat tip Market Folly).

Robertson is shorting long-dated US debt using something called a steepener swap play. Although the mechanism of this trade may be unfamiliar, at heart it’s a simple bet on inflation.

Robertson reckons inflation could easily hit 7% and that it could even reach 18%. Again, Notes readers will be familiar with this market script. This from eFinancialNews:

Steepeners are a type of interest rate swap, where one party agrees to pay the other a fixed rate in exchange for a floating rate, which is derived from the difference between long and short term rates. Many of these products also use high leverage, where the difference between the two rates is multiplied by up to 50 times to produce a higher return.

Retail investors can make the same play as Robertson without using interest rate swaps. It’s actually very straightforward.

Robertson is betting on the yield curve steepening. This happens when the difference between the yields of short-term and long-term US Treasurys increases. Robertson is essentially short the price of long-term US Treasurys and long the price of short-term US Treasurys.

Anyone with a brokerage account can do this by buying the iShares Barclays 1-3 Year Treas.Bd ETF (NYSE: SHY) and shorting the iShares Barclays 7-10 Year Treas.Bd ETF (NYSE: IEF). This would give you a leveraged return on an inflationary future, which not only Robertson but also many other underground investors we know are betting on.

Robertson reckons China and Japan will stop buying US government debt as the dollar weakens. This would bring down the price of 10-year T-notes and cause the yield to shoot up.

Of course, the reason Robertson is so sure that inflation is on the horizon is the Fed’s quantitative easing ‘solution’ to the economic crisis, aka the printing money route, combined with the enormous pressure on US Treasurys right now.

I’m amazed at the amount of money the government is throwing at this thing. You don’t even react anymore unless somebody’s talking about $1 trillion. I genuinely admire the administration’s courage in doing what it’s doing, but not the wisdom of it. I look at the TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility) program, for example, and it’s almost a bribe to get people to put on more leverage … I ask anyone to give me an example of an economy beefed up by huge amounts of quantitative easing that did not inflate tremendously when or if the economy improved . I think what we’re doing now will either fail, or it will result in unbelievably high inflation – and tragically, maybe both. That would mean a depression and explosive inflation, which is frightening.

Even the mainstream media has started to pick up on the threat of inflation. How can you hedge against it other than by shorting long-dated government debt? Here’s what the Wall Street Journal recommends:

1. A managed gold fund such as Tocqueville Gold (TGLDX) or US Global Investors World Precious Minerals (UNWPX). This is a lower-risk alternative to buying gold directly, since the metal itself can be volatile.

2. A mutual fund that bets on long-term interest rates rising. The two best known are the ProFunds Rising Rates Opportunity fund (RRPIX) and the Rydex Inverse Government Long Bond Strategy fund (RYJUX).

3. An absolute return fund that can use derivatives and aims to beat inflation. An example: MFS Diversified Target Return (DVRAX), which aims to beat inflation over 5% a year over a market cycle. The problem: there are no guarantees. Many of these funds are new. And the track record is too short to judge.

4. Refinance your house into a new 30-year fixed mortgage immediately. Rates currently average about 5.32%. If inflation surges, rates will too.

5. Sell long-term bonds. A bond guaranteeing 7% a year for 30 years won’t be worth much if inflation hits 10% and CDs start paying 11%. Treasury bonds have sold off sharply. But corporate bonds haven’t. The yield gap between long-term investment grade corporates and 30-year Treasurys, which was nearly 5% in mid-January, has fallen to 3.5%.

6. If you want guarantees, buy inflation-protected Treasury bonds (TIPS). Right now, the 20-year TIPS yield is about 2.4% over inflation.