Gold has been going up for 11 years straight.  What's next for gold?

A depression reduces asset prices, consumer prices, and interest rates. This makes it possible for investors and business people to redirect their efforts on projects that will work.

Yesterday's Financial Times told us that the industrialized nations will borrow $10 trillion this year. Next year, the figure should be higher. Where does all that money come from?

People tend to view the future through the lens of the past.

Government is the natural phenomenon wherein the "insiders" take wealth, power and status from the "outsiders."

In America, the news has been good and bad. The good news was that unemployment was not as bad as it had been. But the bad news was that the good news was largely fraudulent.

The automatic cuts probably aren't going to happen -- at least, not the way they were supposed to happen. The pols are negotiating now. Their challenge is how to scam the voters and investors by pretending to cut spending, without really cutting much of anything.

Governments will pretend to tighten up. The ECB will lower interest rates and print up some new ersatz money. What could go wrong?

There must be limits on how much debt an economy can take. And by all indications, we blew by those limits long ago.

People are looking for someone to blame for their troubles, and they're not likely to identify the real culprits. That would take too much time and thought.