Bill Gross, co-chairman of PIMCO, the world’s largest fixed income group has soberly pegged this economic environment a “mini depression.”

Gross is worth heeding. He is the dean of bond investing in the United States for more than three decades and has made some prescient calls on interest rates and other macroeconomic trends. No other bond fund manager has produced better results than his flagship PIMCO Total Return Fund.

Utilities might be staid and stodgy but they’re also reliable. And finding anything that’s holding its value in this market is worth a hard look.

With the Dow Jones Industrials Average down 8.5% this year, one of the few areas of the market posting any gains at all is the Dow Jones Utilities Average or DJUA, up 1.6%.

Since the Second World War, no other country in Europe has personified exemplary currency strength, fiscal prudence and export prowess more than the German economic machine.

Long a bastion of quality manufactured goods, the Germans take pride in producing some of the world’s best products and historically have protected the purchasing power of the deutschemark until the introduction of the single European currency in 1999.

History of Economic Pain

Germany knows about economic hardship.

With interest rates at their lowest levels in a generation and effectively yielding nothing on short-term debt instruments, including bank savings accounts, investors face a serious conundrum: just where do you park some of that precious liquidity to boost your effective yield in today’s highly uncertain environment?

Over the last few months I’ve been plugging alternatives for some, not all, of that cash-based portion of the portfolio.

Since peaking at an all-time high in October at 89.53, the CBOE Volatility Index or VIX has plunged 56% as stocks seemingly attempt to form a bottom off the November 20 lows. The S&P 500 Index has now risen a cumulative 16.8% since November 20th while the Dow is up 10.5%.

Is this the beginning of a new bull market or an extended rally after more than 18 months of total carnage and nonstop selling?

Just twelve months ago Canada was basking amid a commodity boom accompanied by a bull market in the Canadian dollar, which actually surpassed par-value against the American dollar in late 2007.

In the span of just six months, the Canadian economy has come unglued in a bad way as exports plunge, manufacturing slides deeper into recession and commodity prices collapse. The Canadian dollar, which hit a 7% premium above the U.S. dollar in late 2007 at C$0.93 cents, tanked more than 20% last year.