SUSTAINABILITY OF HIGH MARGINS (CHECKLIST)

A significant part of the current bear thesis rests on the shoulders of supposedly "unsustainable profit margins". You have to seek truth in the opposite opinion (my view is that SPY should be around 1,000 rather than where it is at the moment) and I find that arguments in favor of high margins are quite hard to challenge. I decided to make a checklist and revisit it periodically to see if "argument" still sounds realistic. So, is it different this time?

==> US exported lower returning businesses (e.g. manufacturing) to other countries and kept the best pieces locally (pharmaceuticals, tech) (Mason Hawkins of Southeastern Asset Management - Link) = inflation of labor abroad is sending manufacturing jobs back (probably in yet irrelevant quantities);

==> accounting (minority stakes report just profits and no sales) (same source as above) = sounds logical;

==> effective tax rates are lower (probably partially explained by the above points) (David Bianco of Deutsche Bank - Link) = budgets are unbalanced, tax rates may go up, including foreign tax rates;

==> foreign sales and profits are higher (same source as above) = I do not know how he constructed the chart but as I understand, he is saying that the world is different outside of US; it could be simply a function of dollar depreciation;

==> interest rates are lower (same source as above) = this is clearly mean reverting.

This Link dated April 2012 gives a good illustration of how people tend to extrapolate.

I presented my views in the beginning but I want to stress that I am not pretend to anyhow time the market. I am just more cautious these days but an example of PCS shows that the crowd sometimes moves pretty fast in any environment.

I would be grateful for additional points to the checklist.