The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

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?

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

There is no evidence that the business cycle has been repealed.

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.