The World Begins To Believe America Will Lead Again ?

When Sam Ro got into the office today, he made a comment on the latest note from SocGen's Albert Edwards, which was something to the extent of: It's great that they're not always dumping in America anymore, now they're attacking Australia.

That's a pretty important observation.

More and more, you hear people talking crap about much of the world, but citing America as being relatively superior.

This past weekend, we identified that Hugh Hendry, Jeffrey Gundlach, and Sean Corrigan were all relatively sanguine on the US, even as they talked up the horrors of pretty much the rest of the world.

There are probably a few reasons for this split:

    A big one is energy. Lots of people are getting pumped about the future of the domestic energy biz.

    A superior central bank: As much as people like to hate on the Fed, there's little doubt that the Fed has done WAY better than the ECB.

    The end of the BRICs boom: The fact of the matter is that the really awesome days of Chinese/Brazilian growth seem to be fading a little bit. That makes America look better by comparison.

    The bottom of the US housing bubble: It certainly appears that the worst of the housing bust is over in the US.

Cliches like "cleanest dirty shirt" or "tallest midget" are sometimes used (incorrectly) to explain extreme demand for US Treasuries, despite our high debtload.

But from a fundamentals standpoint, these concepts might have some applicability to changing perceptions of the US.