All except one or two of the chilliest of the permabears are predicting near total economic collapse. I think most bears are arguing more like Dow 7000 or more, which if you think about it, we've already experienced back in 2008, and for better or worse, we're all still here....
With that in mind, the dollar isn't going anywhere. However, there is a possibility that the strength of the dollar could fall in the near future. I don't know. However, what we do know right now is this:
We've been experiencing deflation since March 2009. So, the inflation fears right now are a bit inflated as well, seeing as how our real problems are elsewhere.
For that matter, I've also argued that gold is an expensive trade to go into right now, and if there's something I've learned, it is that no matter how good the prospects are, if something costs too much, you still might not make money....
However, I am OK with gold being a diversifier in a buy-and-hold portfolio. For manual slice-and-dice portfolios, how about perusing some "
lazy portfolios"? "Lazy" in this context isn't a bad thing by the way.
Another form of investor risk is paralysis by analysis. The deeper we go, the more confusing it gets, which could be counter-productive if it causes us to shy away from investing properly or none at all.