It can be argued that the U.S. brokerage and investment banking industry has transformed the modern American stock market into nothing more than a mechanism for transferring wealth from shareholders to management.

The strength in gold is revealing the general weakness in the dollar.

There is simply no way to sustain an economy based on consumer credit.

You don't drive an economy by consuming - the consumer is not the engine, the consumer is the caboose.

All those commodities are going to have to rise in value as we are in short supply and we are printing too much money.

Printing money creates inflation, which weakens an economy. Unfortunately, this kind of common-sense thinking never seems to penetrate academic circles.

Once the government runs out of foreign and private sector bidders for new Treasurys, the Federal Reserve will be the only buyer, and the hyper-inflation cat will be completely out of the bag.