It's Hard To Overemphasize How Important Ford's

And Whatever Their Publicized Angst Over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons Of Mass Destruction,' American And British Authorities Were Also Concerned About Violence In An Area That Harbors A Resource Indispensable For The Functioning Of The Word Economy. I Am Saddened That It Is Politically Inconvenient To Acknowledge What Everyone Knows: The Iraq War Is Largely About Oil.

The Very Nature Of Finance Is That It Cannot Be Profitable Unless It Is Significantly Leveraged... And As Long As There Is Debt, There Can Be Failure And Contagion.

Gold, Unlike All Other Commodities, Is A Currency...and The Major Thrust In The Demand For Gold Is Not For Jewelry. It's Not For Anything Other Than An Escape From What Is Perceived To Be A Fiat Money System, Paper Money, That Seems To Be Deteriorating.

It Seems Superfluous To Constrain Trading In Some Of The Newer Derivatives And Other Innovative Financial Contracts Of The Past Decade. The Worst Have Failed; Investors No Longer Fund Them And Are Not Likely To In The Future.

Clearly, Sustained Low Inflation Implies Less Uncertainty About The Future, And Lower Risk Premiums Imply Higher Prices Of Stocks And Other Earning Assets. We Can See That In The Inverse Relationship Exhibited By Price/earnings Ratios And The Rate Of Inflation In The Past. But How Do We Know When Irrational Exuberance Has Unduly Escalated Asset Values, Which Then Become Subject To Unexpected And Prolonged Contractions As They Have In Japan Over The Past Decade?