Yes it's a huge problem, people are being forced into riskier and riskier areas to eek a return. A return that in no way justifies the risk to your capital.
My $.02
I haven't done any of this myself, as my main investment plan has been merely to put most of my money into tangible assets with limited supply but given another 6 months or so I would start to invest in some of the following areas.
1. A South East Asia fund, I've heard Jim Richards/Marc Faber/Schiff talk about Myanmar/Burma a lot - Emerging from diplomatic isolation and Western sanctions it is a huge area of untapped potential, starting from dead poor so many investments there should survive and thrive despite the bleak global outlook.
I like companies like -
1. G4S - The largest security company in the world, even though they messed up the olympics, coming from South Africa, I know that when things get worse, security is the booming industry. (Their share price took a huge hit after an over-charging scandal I think in July from a high of 310 to a current price of 209. Before that, they had a smoothish 10 year uptrend going. Given that they have operations in 125 countries around the world I think they'll pull through and this is probably a good price to buy.)
2. Brewery Companies, e.g. SAB Miller
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts...n;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;
When you look at the oldest companies that are still in existence and doing well, the most common seem to be breweries and banks. I don't know about the future of banks, but it seems that whatever has happened over the last few hundred years, people drink beer, so good breweries have continued to thrive. So I'd put my money here.
3. Follow Warren Buffet, he's made his two biggest purchases in the last few years, Heinz & a Railway company.
When the dollar gets weak and things get bad people will switch to cheaper foods like baked beans etc.
Railways are out of favour as it much more convenient to travel by car or use a trucking network for deliveries but rail can actually move
4x more goods per gallon than a truck, so when the fuel price rises as the dollar gets weaker, rail companies should benefit.