Are you finding it tough to make investment decisions these days? Are the headlines too scary? I'd say 2008 was scarier by far. But today certainly feels like a close second. So many things look as though they could go wrong, possibly all at once, that it's no wonder it appears the investing public has "checked out."

The way I see it, there are four major risks facing investors today. There's the debt-ceiling showdown in Washington, the painfully slow jobless and housing-less recovery in the United States coinciding with the end of QE2, and inflationary pressures in China and the potential for a hard landing there. Then we have what I consider the "Big Kahuna" of event risks, the European debt crisis.

What are investors supposed to do? Buy the "safety" of cash, knowing that they may be potentially losing more than 3% of their purchasing power every year because of inflation? Buy Treasuries, even though the combination of high-debt loads, large deficits, and negative real rates could make for a poor value proposition, at least right now? Buy stocks, knowing that we may be only a few policy mistakes away (in Washington, Brussels, or Beijing) from a crisis? Buy gold, even though it has already run up to $1,600? Difficult choices, indeed.

In some ways, today feels like an echo of 2008. And for good reason, in my view. The credit crisis was about contagion emanating from the subprime crisis to the investment banks to the commercial banks to the corporate sector to the consumer. From my perspective, only TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program) and QE1 (the first round of quantitative easing by the Fed) stopped the bleeding in late 2008, and then China's fiscal stimulus got the global economy going again in 2009.

But now what? Here's my thinking on each of four major risk factors today-along with possible implications for investors.

David Fuller's view This is a good overall summary of investor concerns, possible scenarios for each and the author's views as to the likely outcomes. However he does not address what I have often described as both an opportunity and risk - commodity price inflation.

Fullermoney's main format for these subjects is the daily Audio and visitors to this site can hear earlier recordings as they are all listed in the Public Archive. Just click on the 'Subscriber's Audio' link shown upper-left and scroll to the dates of interest.

Here are a few summary points regarding my current investment thinking in today's environment:

Personally, I definitely wish to retain some gold and silver, and possibly also platinum and palladium, despite the decade-long gains already seen.

While somewhat concerned about the possibility of even greater volatility, with my long-term investment portfolio in Fullermoney's Asian growth and resources themes, I like the currency protection which they afford me against the serially weak USD, EUR and GBP.

I would like to have more equity yield and am likely to address this in coming months, most likely favouring some of the high-yielding companies reviewed by Eoin periodically. I will do this by investing some of my 'just in case' cash reserves.