The airline industry is a mess. Things are so out of whack that one airliner, American Airlines, announced last week that it was going to charge for the baggage that passengers check.

You hear it everywhere in the press… “Oil is in a bubble and it’s all down to speculators driving up the price”.

What you’re looking at below is a chart of the gold-to-oil ratio. The gold-to-oil ratio is exactly what it sounds like. You simply take the spot price for an ounce of gold — around $900 per ounce as of this writing — and divide it by the price of a barrel of oil.

A private-equity consortium headed up by Candover Partners Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Candover Investments PLC, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) has boosted its initial bid for U.K.-based Expro International Group PLC (PINK: EXPRF) by 8%, just narrowly beating out Halliburton Company’s (HAL) $3.4 billion (1.71 billion pounds) cash offer.

Something very unusual is happening in the oil markets… and it’ll keep the oil price way above $100 for the rest of year.

With all the sniping and arguing in the media lately… you might be a bit confused as to whether oil or gold is the best hedge in the current climate. The answer’s quite simple… let me explain…

Despite the fact that the gold price has now slipped to around $924, gold miners still expect the gold price to rise further. Indeed, they’ve put their money where their mouth is.

It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong – and, when it comes to the oil business, there doesn’t come any bigger than T Boone Pickens.