Nothing talks in Washington any louder than money. Today, the big spenders are betting against the land of the free and the home of the brave. But of course, if you’ve been paying attention, the action is no surprise.

If you invested in United States treasuries over the last year, you bought into the worst performing sovereign debt across the globe. Thanks to the Obama administration’s unending yearning to artificially pull the nation’s GDP into positive territory, investors are quickly raising their nose to the country’s ever-growing pile of debt.

In all of 2009, the Treasury Department received loans of $2.1 trillion from the world’s investors. It was an extraordinary year of borrowing that took the nation’s debt liability from $5.80 trillion to $7.17 trillion at the end of November.

Of course, with unemployment likely to show yet another rise later this week and some 45,000 businesses tossing in the towel over the last twelve months, Obama is not done spending yet.

Many experts believe 2010 will mirror the borrowing habits of 2009, when Geithner and the Treasury hit the auction market 79 times.

As we are seeing today, excessive borrowing can lead to strong market opportunities for well-positioned investors.

As long as Uncle Sam is spending more than he is pulling from the pockets of hard-working Americans, the value of the dollar will be at risk.

After a very strong December, the greenback is showing weakness today. It now trades at $1.4436 against the euro, a dip of more than a penny below the 2009 closing figure. A penny may not sound like much to the uninitiated, but a quick look at anything dollar-denominated tells a different story.

Oil is up, gold is up and the equities market is soaring. A turnaround in the dollar is just what we needed to get the pendulum swinging once again.

As I have said many times before, a falling dollar is good, but it can only drop so far before it turns out to be an utter disaster. Once the markets believe the bottom is going to fall out, it is all over for the security of the world’s top currency.

But that’s a problem we won’t have to deal with until the Fed pulls out of the game. Unfortunately, Bernanke’s likely to put the fiscal rejuvenation machine into reverse in the not-so-distant weeks ahead.

For now, however, it is time to make money while you can.

Any good contrarian investor loves the gold markets lately. I love it because we are raking in the gains over at TFN Strategic Trader thanks to recent swings in the precious metals market.

For nearly all of December, I took flak because of my gold-market pessimism. But folks that followed my advice saved themselves some big money as the shiny metal lost nearly 10% of its value.

But in the final week of the year, you may recall, I noticed the market was ready to change direction. On Thursday morning, with just a couple of trading hours left in the year, I made my move. I wrote my subscribers about a strategic option contract.

The move paid off. Thanks to gold prices surging by more than $26 per ounce today, the contract has soared by 44%. I am sure plenty of members are taking the one-day gains, but I’m holding out for more.

2010 will be the year of all years for currency and hard-asset traders. We are already proving it.

*** Here’s a question that will help you get the New Year off to a profitable start.

What do Medifast (NYSE:MED), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ:GMCR) and Hansen Natural (NASDAQ:HANS) have in common?

The answer: They all make food or drinks designed to make you feel good. Even better, they comprise the three best performing stocks of the last decade.

Medifast, with its popular weight-loss diets, soared over 16,000% over the past ten years. Green Mountain, and its diverse coffee lineup, led investors to gains of 9,210%. And Hansen, the maker of a variety of popular drinks, is up by 7,022%.

Not bad figures for a time that most pundits are eager to call a lost decade. It is not surprising to see a decade that was so focused on consumer spending and short-term happiness to produce these kinds of figures.

Looking forward, however, into a decade when unemployment is creeping higher, discretionary spending is down and it is becoming hip to be frugal (finally, my time to shine), the three stocks listed above may give back plenty of their recent gains unless they reposition their product portfolio.

In ten years, it won’t be “fun” food we will be talking about. With the nation’s population growing by leaps and bounds, it will be staples like corn, wheat and water that dominate the headlines.

Don’t worry. We’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.

With the nation’s unemployment rate officially in double-digit territory and the under-employed rate ready to the 20% mark, the politicians that promised bliss in the days ahead are eating their words today.

And that means Wall Street is eating its recent gains.

For nearly a month, the Dow has hovered around the 10,000 mark. After hundreds of billions of dollars were withdrawn earlier this year, it was relatively easy to put that money back to work and send the equities market higher.

But now that the economic data is showing facts of slower-than-expected expansion rather than “ideas” of growth, investors are forced to explain their logic. The Dow doesn’t want to budge from 10k.

So far, I’ve heard very few reasons for prices to go any higher. Maybe in China or Australia, but certainly not here in the land where everything is changing.

Think about what has occurred over the past twelve months and tell me if you believe today’s companies are worth as much as they were two years ago or even five years ago.

We’ve had government takeovers of major banks, mortgage lenders, auto manufacturers and insurers. Washington has told people how much they can make in a year. Legislators even introduced retroactive taxes.

Then there is the threat of cap and trade blowing energy prices (an input to nearly every American business) sky high. Now it is mandatory healthcare and the risk to corporate payrolls, tax structures and discretionary spending.

After all that, I hate to think about what is next. An assault on allergens?

*** Maybe I’m just being too pessimistic. After all it has been a long week and I spent five hours at the airport in the middle of the night yesterday waiting to pick up my mother-in-law.

Don’t get me wrong. I think there are some fantastic buying opportunities out there. There are just not in the places most Americans are looking.

But since the mother-in-law brought me eighty pounds of fresh Alaskan salmon, halibut and moose meat (she’s as close to Sarah Palin as you can get without committing to Playgirl), I am starting to feel a bit generous today.

That means I’m going to share with you what I am certain will be the biggest gainers of the next twelve months.

First… healthcare. Think about it. Who is easier to rip off than the federal government?

Just ask Haliburton, Goldman Sachs and whoever sold those $750 toilet seats.

Within a year of signing some diluted version of Pelosi-care, the headlines are going to be filled with record-breaking profits out of the nation’s largest healthcare providers and drug companies.

If Wall Street has the nerve to toss out billions in bonuses while the ink on their bailout checks is still drying, imagine the kind of zeroes that will be added to the paychecks of healthcare executives.

I can hear the excuses now. “If we want to save lives, we have to retain the best workers.”

It is going to be a feeding frenzy when Uncle Sam is the third-party payer.

Next, forget about gold.

One reader wrote to me yesterday and said, “I think it will hit $2,000, but it will probably hit $600 first.”

Could not have said it better myself. Gold’s value is too tied up with political moves and currency fluctuations. With one well-timed press release, China can send the price wherever the heck it wants.

I don’t want my wealth facing that kind of risk, especially after we just rammed Beijing with the largest tariffs yet.

That’s why my money is on palladium. It’s much harder to find and has a huge industrial demand.

Palladium is at the heart of the world’s commodity carry trade. I told TFN Strategic Traders to play Stillwater Mining several months ago and the trade nearly doubled in a week. It is still a good buy, especially as China’s auto industry takes shape.

Finally, go short on natural gas. Get as much leverage as you can because prices are about to plummet fast.

On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency was one of the first major groups to back my opinion. In a draft of a report due out next week, the influential group warned of a massive glut of natural gas as global demand begins to top off and turn around just as we are pulling more of the stuff out of the ground than ever.

But don’t wait until Tuesday to read the report. You can read my version right now. In it, I recommend three ways to play the situation.

So far, two of the plays would have already doubled your money. All three are well into positive territory. Prices are almost out of my buying range, so do not hesitate to take action.

*** Before I go for the week, I need to make a correction. Yesterday, I inadvertently said the Senate extended unemployment benefits for 14 months. The actual extension is 14 weeks.

I apologize for accidentally releasing my psychic secrets. The 14-month extension won’t come until next spring, when Congress finally makes it illegal to layoff any employee.

Enjoy a great autumn weekend,
Andrew Snyder