Jose,

I regularly follow a US economist, Peter Schiff (maybe have probably heard of him). He has pretty much predicted all outcomes of the past 5 years including the recent surge in commodities, the demise of the US dollar, the rise of China, the mortgage crisis and on and on and on.

He is very easy to follow and understand as he uses ONE basic principle - common sense.

To answer your questions quickly....

A) Yes the US will recover. When? When they change their monetary policy and take the lumps they deserve for going so far into debt and for recently making matters much much worse by offering bailouts and a monster health plan that pushes them further into debt. My guess - 6-8 years at best. I love Obama but he is destroying their economy/country.

The good news? The rest of the worlds economies are much more sound and will still consume. This has already happening. It's quite plain to see if you know where to look actually.

Long story short? USD no longer global reserve currency. World adopts some sort of new gold standard currency. USD becomes relatively worthless. CDN dollar follows suit (through govt policy). Commodities prices rise (relative to drop in USD), yay NOT. Oil prices rise. USA and CDN standards of living decrease. NOT shareholders maintain standard of living, enjoy cheap real estate, drink lots of coffee and wait for North American economy to recover.

That's my nutshell synopsis. And that's coming from a guy who is typing on his laptop at 1230 at night because all he does is read about the economy as a hobby for about 12 hours a week. Point being - I could very well could be wrong. My sources could very well be wrong (they haven't been in past 3 months). Something extraordinary could happen, but as a betting man - Commodities is a great place to be even if it's because everything else is simply worse!

Bmack