Our next "world currency tour" stop is one of the most dangerous places on Earth… Australia.
In his fantastic book In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson highlights how the land of "Oz" is packed with species that are the deadliest of their kind in the world. If the critters don't get you, the heat or the ocean will. (The country once lost a prime minister to the tides.)
And like its "ABC" cousin Canada, Australia is packed with huge stores of natural resources. It has enormous stores of natural gas, uranium, iron ore, and gold. It's also on the doorstep of China and Japan, which consume incredible amounts of the stuff. A bet on Australia these days is a bet on China's raw material consumption.
Also like Canada, Australian banks have behaved "less dumb" than their counterparts in Iceland, Spain, the U.S., and the U.K. over the past decade. That restraint and rising commodity prices have produced the uptrend you see below.
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