Baltimore — (TFN): Did you feel it? Just a couple of hours ago, you went into debt for another $106. You never signed any paperwork or agreed to it – a handful of unelected officials took care of that for you – but you’re now on the hook for at least another Franklin.

Earlier today, the Treasury auctioned off yet another chunk of American debt. This time it offered seven-year bonds to the tune of $32 billion. In all, the nation will go in hock for yet another $118 billion this week.

The dollar nevertheless remains the world’s leading reserve currency, with the euro in second place. Investors are naturally anxious to protect themselves against markets, including currency markets, which have shown such a high degree of volatility.

The Chinese, who have the greatest number of dollars in their currency reserves, have already suffered substantial losses.

In what amounts to a crisis of the dollar, the euro is in second place as a reserve currency, but there are potential threats to the future of the euro, due to the weak productivity of the Mediterranean economies.

In the spirit of not suffering from confirmation bias, in today’s Notes we will try to make the bearish case against gold. So before you storm Notes HQ in Buenos Aires craving blood, hear us out. Many of our staff here love gold and have long term holdings.

Back on March 2, I wrote a bullish piece on copper and detailed that the price had stabilized and that the bearish sentiment was over the top at that time. Copper has rallied nicely since then, so I thought it would be a good time to update you on my view.

The action on Wall Street is nauseating. The more Washington acts, the more Wall Street drops. The folks with stomachs strong enough to keep them in the market are looking more like gamblers than investors. They are quickly realizing all roads lead to Washington.

American consumers are feeling the pain both at the pump and in the grocery store. Meanwhile with real full-time unemployment rates climbing towards 10%, penny-pinching consumers are wondering just who is to blame.

Short-term speculators are selling Asian stocks in their droves. No more so than in my favourite market of them all: Vietnam.

Prices should remain more or less stable when the supply of money increases at the same rate as the supply of goods and services.

Congress has threatened to take action against speculative commodities traders, as food and energy prices break fresh records.

A desperate Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill, warned during a Senate hearing on commodities speculators that “the American people are about to take out pitchforks” because of the cost of groceries and gasoline.

McCaskill then told an official from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission: “If you don’t do something, Congress will,” according to a report in the LA Times.

Of course, it doesn’t appear to have struck the outraged Senator to consider mere market forces such as supply and demand or, in the case of oil prices, increased demand from emerging markets and decreased supply because of bad weather or geopolitical events.

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