You have stumbled upon the truth. The real danger to the American way of life....life as we have come to know it, is that the dollar has been destroyed by Alan Greenspan's easy money policy. He took fed rates to 1% while the treasury sold fiat money to Japan,Swiss, and any other entity that the Fed could coerce into buying essentially diminishing in value dollars. Once he got to 1% he was, in essence, paying banks who borrow from the fed to borrow money. This is in addition to the profligate spending of the US government. Then at low interest rates everyone and his dog borrowed money for cars, refinancing already paid for homes, credit card buying, and now the time is rapidly approaching to pay the piper. The USDX (dollar) is beginning a rapid decay and today was about 88. The price of gold has a direct inverse relationship to the dollar. I suggest you releive yourself of as much paper as possible and get physical gold. The dollar, I fear, at this time next year will cease to be the world's reserve currency. Conditions today do no mimick 1973 in that today there is not an oil shortage but rather an oil access shortage...more demand from China and India and others. If alqaeda were to stop the flow of oil by blowing a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, the Panama canl, the Suez Canal,the Strait of Gabralta oil will immediately go to well over 125 dollars per barrel. But most importantly your way of life, your job, the American existance would cease to exist. We (USA) need to drill in ANWAR, develope nuclear facilities, and even put some wind mills off of the shore of Martha's Vinyard just to spite Kerry and Moma T. We are in one hell of a spot and the day of reconing is here. God help us if Kerry gets into the White House. Now we stand at the precipice of inflation like in 1980 when we saw 18% interest rates. I don't know about you but I will not buy anything on time with high interest rates. There goes the jobs. The only way to get out of it is hyperinflation. The government cannot lower interest rates. It went to 1% and was in essence giveing federal reserve notes away. Do you think the government will lower the tax rate and adjust your tax bill as you are paid in less and less valuable dollars. I don't think so. So here we are... you and me and the poverty pimps screaming ant the elected officials to give us a break. If I were taking bets, I'd go with the pimps because there are more votes. Remember what a great thinker once said, "When the electorate realizes they can vote themselves a raise from the public largess, this consitutional republic is over."
Interesting analysis. Makes me wonder how bad it may get.