The US economy is in dire straights and I believe not many people are disputing this openly unless they have a paid agenda. I do not want to go into details why they are in such trouble as that could be a long post. Suffice it to say that Sub Prime , mortgages ignited a fuse that is still burning and I do not believe we have seen the "boom" yet.

Here is a post of mine dated November 19th 2007 discussing the US situation at the time.

http://agoracom.com/ir/Noront/messag...

(keep in mind that this post only received 3 thumbs up as most people at the time where in denial and did not want to see the US situation for what it was. The same applies to today-people still expect the US to bounce back...I am not saying they will not but they will have to go thru some major pain first)

The situation has unfolded pretty much as I had predicted however, I now believe the US is in a worse situation than I predicted. How does this tie up with Gold, gas and oil you say?

Well, as discussed in my post, consumers account for 2/3 of GDP and many of them are tapped out for reasons discussed in that post. Soaring gasoline/oil prices add to this misery both economically and phsycologically. The US is a net importer of Oil. I am not certain about gold but if gold becomes a favorite hedge against inflation, then the US may become a net importer of this commodity as well. If gold and oil both go up significantly, inflation will increase dramatically, the US consumer will be squeazed even more and the economic motor of the country will be in huge trouble and this will lead the US to slowly lose its position as the world's biggest economy. The other effect of being a net importer of oil and gold would be to continue to increase the current account deficit the country is running which may lead to dumping of american dollars by other central banks which would lead the american dollar to fall to levels never seen before.

At this point however, other central banks and the US are working extremely hard to lower both gold and oil prices to give the US economy time to find its footing. Oil and Gold are always tied together so to manipulate 1, you need to manipulate both. So to protect the US economy, the world's manipulators are protecting the US consumer aka the GDP driver by having affordable gas and some phsycological recovery.

Another reason we are seeing very poor performance in the stock market is the fact that to survive, the US consumer is selling his stocks. This contributes to the bear market we find ourselves in. Not many buyers when you have to concentrate on saving your house. Lots of sellers when you are trying to save your house. So until we see some stability of the US consumers, I believe we will remain in a bear market. That is why the PPT and the world's governments/institutions are working so hard to keep oil and gold down. They have to defend the US consumer at all cost at this moment. Raging inflation would cripple the US economy.

However, there will come a time when they will leave the US consumer to fend for himself and will protect their own assets. When that time comes, those positioned properly will benefit the most.

All this of course is but my opinion and supplied as food for thought. I welcome all discussions regarding this.

Glorieux

PS I apologize to feminists out there for the use of masculine words only. This was done to keep the text easier to read.