The inflation/deflation debate is hot… It crackles and pops like a pine fire. But it gives off little helpful light. Abe Lincoln may have read by the light of an open fire. But when we tried it, we singed our eyebrows. It made us suspicious of Old Abe; maybe he wasn’t quite as truthful as he pretended to be. Later, we realized he was a mountebank. But that’s another story…

The trouble with being a contrarian is that you can never be quite contrarian enough.

Two charts and three measures of gold’s “real” price today…

With prices testing their record high of $1,033 an ounce set last year gold has again become the hot topic of conversation.

This week, the big story was once again coming from the gold market. Mid-week, the yellow metal hit $1020 – but the rally was not of the usual variety. Generally, investors flock to gold when the dollar is weak and inflationary fears run high. But as we all know, inflation is not a problem right now – despite the Fed’s best efforts.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy. The media struggles to say something meaningful about it. Here at the Daily Reckoning we will not even attempt meaningfulness. We’ll be satisfied with a few snide remarks.

Gold closed at $999 on Tuesday. Then, yesterday, it closed down $2. There’s a time to buy gold; and there’s a time to sell it. Which time is it? The question rose with the gold price itself. It needs an answer.

Back in mid-June, more than 75% of the investors responding to a CNNMoney poll said they were planning to buy stocks – many of them aggressively.

Clowns to the left of us… Jokers to the right… The Simpleton’s Analysis: Consumers cut back. The economy sank.

It wasn’t long ago that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s decision to nationalize state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) resulted in a failed coup that very nearly cost him his post.