In 1961, the great free-market economist Milton Friedman wrote a paper called “The Lag in Effect of Monetary Policy,” wherein he discovered a six- to nine-month delay in how long it would take for a change in monetary policy to be felt in the economy and the stock market.

When the Labor Department recently reported that U.S. payrolls fell by 345,000 jobs in May – the lowest total in eight months – commentators were suddenly spotting “green shoots” of economic recovery virtually everywhere they looked.

We keep having bad dreams about all the phony money central banks are creating to ‘fix’ the economy. This is not a figure of speech. We are actually having nightmares about this. We wake up in cold sweats.

Avery Goodman at Seekingalpha.com asks the intriguing question, “Did the ECB Save COMEX from Gold Default?”

Doug Noland of PrudentBear.com found all kinds of interesting things last week, especially if you enjoy heart palpitations and crushing chest pains…

I thought that I had a pretty good handle on how much “stimulus” money Congress and the Fed have spent so far, ranging, as it does, in the zillions of dollars…

I was captivated by the Wall Street Journal headline “Bearish Big Investors Catch Gold Bug” by Gregory Zuckerman, because I don’t ever expect to see anything favorable about gold in the WSJ…

Hugo Salinas Price, at plata.com, really had me going when he wrote, “Several years ago – I don’t remember the date – I read an interesting comment”…

U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech to the joint session of Congress this week was a beautiful performance. His language was exquisite, his delivery was superb, his rhetoric – at times – truly uplifting. 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said that he expects inflation to be “quite low for some time,” but that the Federal Open Market Committee will begin publishing its long-term inflation forecasts to promote transparency.