Pretend, just for a moment, that you’re President Obama. You have big spending plans – national health insurance, two wars, and a trillion dollar bailout for your friends on Wall Street. Not to mention paying for the soaring costs of Social Security and Medicare.

Chinese stocks rise 5%! Risk Assets follow! OECD forecasts faster global rowth…Gold & Silver kicking sand again! And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

For U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the biggest challenges are still to come.

After earning hefty profits on its commodities trading for nearly 18 years, heavyweight trader Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) now finds itself on the hot seat, defending this crucial source of revenue. And while that may not be good for Goldman, it’s also bad for investors.  Let me explain…

Several key second-quarter earnings reports could either validate or undercut assertions that the U.S. economy is poised for recovery.

An article on Bloomberg reported that US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said, “The US unemployment rate may not peak until the second half of 2010, even as the broader economy shows signs of improvement.”

In the currency market, the dollar lost some more ground to the euro. Late Friday, the euro was trading at $1.4068 vs. $1.3991 on Thursday.

A Collapse of Bond Prices Could Send Investors into Stocks.

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.