While Jim Cramer and others are wringing their hands, the people I respect most are turning bullish.

At least, over the long term.

Let's start with John Bogle. (Doesn't it always start with John Bogle?)

Judging by the series of interviews he's been giving lately, Bogle is very worried about the U.S. economy. As he said in an interview with Forbes today (highlighted by Murray Coleman in our invaluable new daily news roundup), "it will be a year-and-a-half to two years before [the U.S. economy] turns upward."

That doesn't mean investors should be sitting on the sidelines. Far from it. Bogle says the market may be undervalued by about $7.5 trillion right now, and thinks that the market has likely over-discounted the impending recession.

Bogle's not alone. In the forthcoming January/February issue of the Journal of Indexes, Rick Ferri (a great financial advisor) calls this "the greatest opportunity in our lifetime" for

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h1 style="text-align: center;"bRichard Fuldbr //b/h1h2 style="text-align: center;"bspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"Lehman Brother CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr./span/b/h2br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/17/timestopics/fuld-190.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 144px; height: 182px;" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/17/timestopics/fuld-190.jpg" alt="" border="0" //aNew York Magazine recently wrote up a very lengthy article on Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers who is blamed for driving the firm into the ground earlier this year. Here is a short excerpt from the article:br /blockquoteOn June 11, Richard S. Fuld Jr., CEO of Lehman Brothers, sat down to lunch with a half-dozen of Lehman’s senior investment bankers. Since the fall of Bear Stearns in March, Fuld had been struggling to keep “the mother ship,” as Fuld liked to call his firm, from taking on water, but with little success. The stock was sinking quickly. In just a few months, Lehman had given back ten ...

When it comes to the financial markets, September was a startling and unsettling month that Americans may never forget. We have witnessed the collapse and/or government rescue of financial services giants that are household names. The financial fears of the public and the resulting stock and bond market volatility have prompted the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury to resort to bailouts and backstops on a historic scale.

What does it all mean for the future of our financial system? While cringing at the potential expense, some experts seem to agree with government officials that intervention is most likely necessary, and that the costs of these measures outweigh the potential risk of doing nothing in the midst of a crisis of confidence.

Here’s a look at what may have prompted this situation, what has transpired recently in the financial sector, and how the government has acted to stem the negative effects of

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Nations do not purchase their prosperity, says Eric Fry. Since this crisis started last year, the government has thrown around $8 trillion at the problem. But these are banknotes that it has manufactured for itself. And that’s why we may soon face a severe threat from inflation.

This from The Rude Awakening:

Citigroup did not go bankrupt yesterday, therefore the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared nearly 400 points. If Citigroup does not go bankrupt tomorrow, there’s no telling how high the Dow might go.

Joy and jubilation returned to Wall Street yesterday because the federal government tossed a $326 billion lifeline to Citigroup - $306 billion worth of loan guarantees and $20 billion of actual cash. Unfortunately, Dow points aren’t as cheap as they used to be. Remember last March, when the Treasury handed a $30 billion check to J.P. Morgan to finance the Bear Stearns takeover? The Dow rallied 187

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In a recent interview with Financial Times, mega-investor Jim Rogers had some interesting comments about the fate of the US Dollar.

He sure doesnt mince words.

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Insight: The dollar is a flawed currency

By Jim Rogers

Published: November 17 2008 16:05 | Last updated: November 17 2008 16:05

The following are excerpts from this week’s View from the Markets online interview

FT: It’s a year since we last interviewed you. You were aggressively bearish about the dollar, but you thought there would probably be a rebound and you would take that as an opportunity to further get out of the dollar. Have you made a further exit from the dollar?

JR: Not yet, no. And the reason I haven’t is because we’re in a period of forced liquidation of everything. We’ve only had eight or nine periods like this in the past 150 years, where everybody has to reverse their positions on everything. There is a gigantic

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Key News• Oil prices fell below $53 to almost a two-year low . (AP)• The yield on two-year US Treasury bonds hit a record low of 1.06 per cent, responding both to the fresh flight to safety and the prospect of lower interest rates. Eurozone government bond futures hit their highest level since March 2006. (FT)

• World stock markets tumbled Thursday, with benchmarks in Tokyo and Seoul losing almost 7 percent each. (AP)• Five years after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke helped stamp out the risk of deflation, the threat is returning as the financial crisis and a worsening economic slump pull inflation lower. (Bloomberg)• The RBA said in a monthly bulletin today that it bought A$3.15 billion ($2 billion) of its own currency last month, the biggest net purchase on record, as the local dollar posted a record monthly decline. • U.S. options

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Welcome to the Fantasyland issue of The 5…“Shouldn’t worry about the deficit,” assures Barack Obama… “yes we can” keep spending. Can’t balance the budget of your dreams? Call the Treasury… Atlanta’s doing it. Gold still suffering… Ed Bugos’ future fantasies for precious metals stocks. Plus, no one immune to the great housing illusion… the infamous Neverland Ranch shuts its doors.

“We shouldn’t worry about the deficit next year or even the year after,” the U.S. president-elect Barack Obama said on 60 Minutes over the weekend.

We were afraid that Barack’s message of “change you can believe in” was going to make it harder to take issue with politics as usual in Washington. But now we see he already drank the Kool-Aid and we had nothing to fear but fear itself.

“The consensus is this, that we have to do

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$5 trillion. That’s how much it has cost so far to bailout out corporate America from its own stupidity, greed and corruption (yes, Fannie and Freddie, that means you). Or to put it another way, the US government in its eternal wisdom has now put the American taxpayer on the hook for $5,000,000,000,000.

- Here’s the breakdown, from CreditSights, a research firm in New York and London, as reported in Forbes magazine.

The Fed

$1 trillion in overnight or short-term loans since March to primary dealers through its emergency discount window* $1.8 trillion in loans to primary dealers through the Fed’s term auction facility since in January* $29 billion in Bear Stearns debt $60 billion of credit available to American International Group $22.5 billion to set up a special purpose vehicle to manage some of AIG’s residential mortgage-backed securities $30 billion of a second fund to hold $70 ...

MARKET COMMENT November 11, 2008 As long as we continue to have 2-4% intraday trading ranges as routine the environment will only be safe for day-traders. Today featured another whiplash as stocks fell sharply early, camped lower, reversed course and then reversed again. It’s enough to send investors to the chiropractor. The open lower this morning followed more bad news and sentiment regarding earnings. But volume was relatively light and we remained camped lower. Then with news pending regarding mortgage restructuring from FNM Da Boyz decided to press things early and caused a healthy ramp just before that news. Further there was some floor talk that Blackrock’s holdings of Bear Stearns toxic mortgages wouldn’t be as bad as feared. Want some? But reality settled in and Da Boyz reversed course just as folks were getting excited and invested ...

The China good feeling dissipates…  Currencies lose their edge…  Fannie Mae needs more!  Silver manipulation? And Now… Today’s Pfennig!OK… Well… All that build up yesterday about how the markets liked the sound of the Chinese announcement to inject $586 Billion worth of renminbi into their economy, dissipated early on in the NY market yesterday. As I left you the euro had climbed above 1.29 again, but ended the day around 1.2740… This is tied directly to the Trading Theme, and that’s all I have to say about that… Have a great day, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow…

HA! Had you there for a minute! The dollar rallied once again, when the deep, dark, dangerous clouds returned, and

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