“Gold is rising because the post-Breton Woods exchange rate system doesn’t work,” Eric Roseman, our colleague over at the Commodity Trend Alert, matter-of-factly declares. “More than ever, governments are piling up debts, as a result of bailing-out their respective banking systems. There is a price to pay for this profligate spending. And gold sniffs trouble.”

Today we examine a couple of recent stories from Fantasyland – otherwise known as Wall Street. Seven of America’s largest banks repaid their TARP borrowings to the US Treasury yesterday, in the process providing one more occasion for hopeful investors to proclaim the end of the credit crisis.

Worldwide indexes reclaim that losing feeling,  The skinny on those TARP repayments and two curiously conflicting assessments,Four factories for one McMinimum Wage house and plenty more…

“Little else is required,” Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, once remarked, “to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

From the depths of the credit crisis last November, the price of Goldman Sachs’ stock (NYSE: GS) has soared 178%. The price of gold, meanwhile, has advanced a mere 25%. Is Goldman, therefore, the new gold? An investment acolyte could easily draw that conclusion.

The Federal Reserve is puzzled. So are we. The Fed is puzzled that Treasury bond yields are soaring. We are puzzled that the Fed is puzzled. Of course bond yields are soaring! Why wouldn’t they be?

The US stock market is enjoying one of those delightful episodes when all news is good news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 221 points yesterday to 8,721 – lifting the Blue Chip index to within a whisker of a positive year-to-date performance.