By Andrew Snyder, TodaysFinancialNews.com

Baltimore — (TFN): You don’t believe all the hype do you? As we close out another year and another decade, the pundits are busy rehashing the action of the past ten years.

The political types are discussing the rise and fall of the Bush administration, a couple of wars and the nation’s first black president. The Hollywood folks are talking about the end of the sitcom, the death of an icon and the phenomenon that is American Idol.

Resident GoldBug at The Daily Reckoning, UK Edition, Bill Bonner offers his analysis of gold, the stock market and the end of the depression.

Bill Bonner (The Daily Reckoning):

The Dow rose again yesterday – up 44 points. Gold went up too – to a new record of $1,114.

Can anything stop stocks and gold?

Baltimore-(TFN):Time to panic? If you are part of the Obama administration the answer is yes. If you are an American investor, hold off on the freaking out for at least another month or so.

If you just look at the daily closes on the indexes, one would conclude that the market is relatively healthy and is still providing opportunities to buy. But when you look at it from other perspectives, you could draw a conclusion that is much different.

From the tidal wave of e-mails and comments I have received from numerous different sources I am under the impression that most investors view the recent rally in the world’s stock markets as a bear market rally. I suppose we would need to define a bear market rally as a rally that fails to make a new all-time high (for the S&P 500, above the 1576 reached in October 2007) and is also followed by a new low for this cycle (below 666 for the S&P 500 reached in early March 2009).

What kind of scared little girls are we here at Notes? Here we were warning our readers of the dangers of the current rally in stocks while everyone else is out there “getting some.” Stocks surged yesterday. The Dow hit its highest level since January 13, closing at 8,426.

Barring some dramatic – and unforeseen – news this week, expect investors to tread water until Thursday, when the government is expected to release the results of the bank stress tests it conducted on the 19 largest U.S. banks.

Buenos Aires, Argentina “What’s that smell?”  We were on an airplane when Edward, 15, noticed an odor that seemed out of place. “Dad…you should have at least cleaned your boots!”