Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?

Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary.

We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.

Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency...and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.