Traps,

Exactly as you said, the $14000B US debt, said everything.

I did some scaling down to help better understand US financial siutation. If we assume US Treasury is a person with $70K income(actual 2008 tax revenue is $2500B), the $14000B debt scales down to $600K, and the 2010 budget deficit $1500B scales down to $40K.

So if someone has only $70k income, takes a $600K mortgage, adds $40k to his credit card every year. A common sense tells that person will go broke at any minute when he can't get a new credit card to pay the minimum interest from the $600k mortgage and $40K credit card balance. US has no way to pay any principle of the $14000B, it just issues new debt to roll the due short term debt and cover the budget deficit. Now very few foreign investors buy the US t-bills and notes, so Fed just bought most of them by printing green paper to de-value dollar more. Oil and gold price will go up higher, with no doubt, and all gold stocks will benefit, since not only US dollar depreciates, but also world wide 80 trillion dollar based assets need escape, gold and resource company stocks will be their main exit and their market price will explode soon, maybe in 3-5 years. JMT.