[zeestephen]

From a technical point of view, it might be time to start nibbling on gold again.

After declining for 6 straight months, gold has put in a “triple bottom” at $1185 - that means traders have tested $1185 three times, but it has not broken through to the down side.

Gold broke out, almost straight up, about 3 weeks ago, to $1230, and the chart looks pretty solid at that level.

Based on my recent experience with food and rent prices, my “personal inflation rate” is about 20 percent!

[The Westerner]

During the long recession/depression, companies tried to offset sharply higher prices for goods by making the packaging smaller. Thus, 1 lb. of coffee is now 12oz. Kleenex boxes, same. Another sharp decline was in quality of packaging, ingredients, etc. They saved every penny they could. similarly, individual businesses on Main St closed up because they cannot compete price wise when their customers are squeezed hard to save money.

Had we not gone off the gold standard,, Americans could not be lulled into our long slow decline of fiat money, expansion of the size of government and its regulations strangling business, and in consequence, the raising of the Iron Curtain in China where slave labor kept our prices artificially low.

Johnson and FDR created the two hungry mouths of socialism, SS and Government regulated medical pricing, but Nixon and his Prussian alter ego HK fatally stabbed us in the back. Prior to those pragmatists, Americans well understood that doing business with countries whose citizens are enslaved is antithetical to America's moral code. Once the compromise was made to send our manufacturing over to the hungry, hard working people of China, we lost our moral compass. And here we are today watching all the relativism play out.