Careful what you say...

In early October, I made an off-hand comment to a friend that the Dow Jones Industrial Average might fall into the 6,000 range (about half its value at the time). Well, it's looking like I'm no longer very far from that number. Nice.

I have difficulty in finding optimism for the situation, too. What's going right? The treasury is clearly out of control, as are our central banks. What might have been a recession will almost certainly now be a depression--with global consequences. How will the U.S. fare? I don't know. What do we manufacture and export anymore? We import almost everything (something with which I'm quite closely familiar, since over90% of my designs are manufactured in China). Lots of currency flowing outward, lots being printed from inside. This may result in momentary deflation, but I can't shake the idea that "printing" one third of our GDP in a couple of months can only lead to staggering inflation in the near future.

The bottom line is that we no longer have a standard of value for our currency. It's based on--what?--faith? Not a very robust means of determining value these days. Gold stocks sell for less than $800, whereas real, physical gold can hardly be obtained at whatever price you like (the old $20 U.S. gold pieces are selling at over $1,000 each).

Might be time to get to know some Amish folks...