Remember that, fellow Americans – no matter what you see or hear, everything is just peachy keen. So, please ignore this:

Gold futures – as well as spot metal – extended record highs shortly before futures floor trading opened in New York on Monday.

A markedly weaker U.S. dollar was mainly behind the surge.

In recent trading, December gold was up $11.70 at $1,107.40 an ounce after hitting a most-active record of $1,111.70. Nearby November gold hit $1,109.30, a front-month Comex record. Spot gold also hit a fresh all-time peak of $1,111.15 an ounce as the U.S. dollar weakened against the euro.

The continued record extensions are bolstering fund expectations that gold prices will keep rising, said George Gero, vice president with RBC Capital Markets Global Futures.

In addition to dollar woes, stronger equities futures and crude prices were helping gold, Gero said.

People are hiding their wealth – converting our rapidly devaluing currency in to gold and oil so that no matter what the government and banks screw up next, they’ll have something left. Of course, not all of us can do this – in fact, most of us can’t. We have to hold on to our ever more worthless dollars because we have to pay the day to day bills and don’t have a lot of surplus cash to shovel in to thousand-dollar-an-ounce gold or seventy-dollar-a-barrel oil.

As I’ve always said, pay very little attention to what people say – people with money are telling us that the economy is getting better…but what they are doing with the money (betting it on stocks, taking profits and converting the results in to commodities) is a much more powerful statement than all the glad-handing about “green shoots” and other references to Happy Days Are Here Again. We’ve got a dead economy, and all we’re waiting for is the burial.

Obama and his bankers hope to finesse things and figure that some how, some way, the wherewithal will be found to get Americans consuming again – thus allowing China to sustain its bubble and keep buying US bonds so we can finance our continued finessing of the economy. See the circle? Well, its a circle jerk. We, the people, are playing center.

Time for us to break out of this – to get past the idiots who brought us here and start laying our plans to build an economy based upon hard work, savings and real wealth. It’ll be a lot more boring – not quite as many X-Boxes under the Christmas tree – but once we do it, we’ll never have this problem again.

Ah, but China is a giant on spindly legs, just as Japan was in the 80’s. A quote from a related article over at Mish’s pretty much tells the tale:

All my young in-laws are rushing in to buy condos putting life savings down as well as laying down additional borrowed family cash down and then paying way more to buy each month than it would cost them to rent. It’s as if the boom crash in the west never happened and they believe themselves immune.

Indeed – the tip off, for me, was some tens of millions of dollars being paid for an apartment in Hong Kong. When people are being that stupid with money, a crash is inevitable. But the bankers are counting on it – especially those most heavily invested in China.

What astounds is that it is certain that no major entity is doing business in China without providing bribes and kickbacks to the elite. It is certain that China’s government is lying about economic and government spending statistics (China’s announced military budget, for instance, is a laughable lie). China is a corrupt, cruel government which makes its living by cheating its own people and ripping off western economies, especially ours. And here we go – and why? Because the money men still think they can get easy profits out of China. So does the Chinese government, which has essentially ordered this madness to happen. And easy profits are all they care about – because that is how you get the swell bonuses which buys the pretty toys which make you a better person than everyone else…

It will come crashing down – and the latest replacement for the United States will be shown to be the absurdity it always has been.

And he still won’t make it up for weeks:

President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy…

…The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a “low-risk option” that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.

It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a “high-risk” one that called for 20,000 additional troops and a “medium-risk” one that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.

The officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal administration planning, cautioned that Obama’s decision isn’t final, and won’t be until after administration officials discuss it with the NATO allies at a Nov. 23 meeting of the alliance’s North Atlantic Council and its Military Committee…

This has gone well beyond dithering – this has gone all the way up to vacillation; and there is no worse error a leader can make. To make any decision – even a bad decision – is better than making no decision at all. Obama seems deathly afraid of coming down on one side or another and the sense I get is that his aides are working it out amongst themselves and just trying to get something which will allow the issue to fade away, at least for a while.

The trouble is that real, flesh and blood American soldiers – as well as Afghans and allies – will have to pay a price for whatever decision Obama makes, or fails to make. People will die, no matter what Obama does – but upon Obama’s decision rides the answer to whether or not they’ll die in vain. We have a war which can be won and the troops are ready to win it – all they need is the word “go” from President Obama. What they might get is “maybe”.

Oh, for just an hour of President Bush back at the helm!

What are we to do about the creeping liberal-fascism in our country?

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God. – George Washington

Just that – and if we do it, then we’ll have done all we can.

Entirely unsurprising, and the very last wake up call we should need:

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.

Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.

We have to find out about all of these Moslem entities and figure out who is producing jihadists and who isn’t. Those who are must be, as I’ve said, deported if foreign, and removed from any sensitive position, if American. We can’t afford to allow things to just drift – more innocent people will die, if we do.

Told you guys this would happen:

…On Friday, when most of the basic facts (of Ft. Hood) were available, Mr Obama tried again. It was scarcely any better. He began by offering “an update on the tragedy that took place” – as if it was an earthquake and not a terrorist attack from an enemy within – and ended with a promise for more “updates in the coming days and weeks”.

Completely missing was the eloquence that Mr Obama employs when talking about himself. Absent too was any sense that the President empathised with the families and comrades of those murdered.

…Mr Obama needs to show Americans that he can relate to what they’re going through, and take responsibility.

It could do him good to show he has a bit of fire in his belly. Perhaps he might make a decision or two based on gut instinct and deep conviction. In other words, maybe he should try being a bit more like Mr Bush.

Our ship of State has been adrift on the crucial things (unemployment, War on Terror) and excruciatingly concentrated on relative trivialities (health care)…and about all things, President Obama dithers and passes the buck and allows others to lead the way. We don’t have a proper Commander in Chief – we’ve got a Orator in Chief; a plastic icon incapable of connecting with actual events.

Gonna be a long three years…

James V. DeLong explains why. Highly recommend this article, as well as DeLong’s The Coming of the Fourth American Republic.

I can’t find anything to dispute with either article and both track exceptionally well with my own views.

But will it pass the Senate?

Hours after President Obama exhorted Democratic lawmakers to “answer the call of history,” the House hit an unprecedented milestone on the path to health-care reform, approving a trillion-dollar package late Saturday that seeks to overhaul private insurance practices and guarantee comprehensive and affordable coverage to almost every American.

After months of acrimonious partisanship, Democrats closed ranks on a 220-215 vote that included 39 defections, mostly from the party’s conservative ranks. But the bill attracted a surprise Republican convert: Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana, who represents the Democratic-leaning district of New Orleans and had been the target of a last-minute White House lobbying campaign. GOP House leaders had predicted their members would unanimously oppose the bill.

We’ll have to have a talk with Cao – but my bet is that since the Stupak amendment passed, he felt it was ok to vote for the bill as it didn’t do the morally reprehensible thing if having taxpayer funded abortion. Its still horrible policy, however, and Cao voted the wrong way.

I like how the MSM says Democrats “closed ranks” – 39 of them broke ranks and joined the GOP. That is a fractured party being ruled by ideologues – and we’re going to whack ’em hard next year.

Now – anyone want to guess on whether or not they’ll get 60 votes for cloture in the Senate? I think Harry will try by passing the most watered-down bill possible and then using the trick of the conference committee to ram through Obama-care, Pelosi-style.

Mark Steyn takes note of our bizarre way of dealing with things like the attack at Ft. Hood:

…Major Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaeda reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity. One might say the same about Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after fatally running over his “too Westernized” daughter Noor in the latest American honor killing. Or the two U.S. residents — one American, one Canadian — arrested a few days earlier for plotting to fly to Denmark for the purposes of murdering the editor who commissioned the famous Mohammed cartoons. But Noor Almaleki’s brother shrugs that’s just the way it is. “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” he says.

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else — even in the Army…

What are we to do? How can we protect ourselves from such an attack? I can’t see it as right and just that we should just ignore the implications and simply wait for the next jihadist to reveal himself via a pile of American corpses.

We’re going to have to carefully sift through our Moslem population and identify those strains of thought which lead people to murder in the name of jihad – and then deport them, if foreign, and relieve them of any sensitive duty, if American. I hate to think that some of my fellow Americans and some of our honored guests will have to put up with such an invasive procedure, but we have to know – the lives of innocent people rest upon our ability to ferret out those who would use Islam as a justification for murder.

Certain things – for instance, any Moslem who advocates Sharia – can certainly tip us off to those who are unreliable and then, political correctness notwithstanding, we’ll have to take the necessary steps to protect ourselves. Its going to be hard, but standing on fears of being offensive won’t do anything other than dig some more graves – Moslem and non-Moslem, innocent and guilty.

An excellent take on this “make you feel good though you don’t” phrase we’re getting from the money men:

The term jobless recovery was used mostly as a pejorative when it came into circulation in the 1990s. But in the wake of last year’s meltdown, it has taken on a new sense: If you give it time, economic growth will come. That has been the mantra throughout 2009.

Yet Friday’s headline unemployment number was worse than economists expected, and it wasn’t the only bad news. The average workweek remains short by historical standards — suggesting many employed people are working fewer hours than they’d like. People are staying unemployed longer and losing their benefits, in spite of recent government action to extend them.

A short work week isn’t just a sign of distress for cash-strapped workers. It also says it will be some time before employers start hiring again.

“Particularly with future uncertainty as high as it is, firms are more likely to increase the hours of underemployed workers before hiring unemployed workers,” wrote Janney Montgomery Scott economist Guy LeBas in a note to clients Friday.

While the alleged growth (which I bet will be revised significantly downwards in the coming months) of the third quarter has officially put us out of recession (and, liberals, made this Obamanomics from now own), the real facts are that the economy isn’t growing at all – in fact, stats to the contrary, its still a shirking, de-leveraging, de-inflating economy. All we’ve got right now is a bit of government-funded smoke and mirrors (and the funding is borrowed, in to the bargain). We’ve lost a lot of wealth, good people, and we won’t get back to low unemployment until we replace the lost wealth – and we won’t do that until we start making, mining and growing more of our own stuff.

Do keep in mind that tax breaks for home and car purchases, while nice for those who can use them, don’t do the trick – all you do with that is move up purchases a little bit for those who are not in financial dire straights. Everyone who is in such straights are helped, at best, only a tiny bit by such money moving. Wealth creation, that is what we need.

So, how do we create wealth? We clear away regulations which inhibit the start up or expansion of new factories, farms and mines. We ease the tax burden on small and medium sized business. We go through de-facto bankruptcy reorganization of our housing industry – from builder to owner to lender, everything has to be re-adjusted to fit current reality, and thus relieve a terrible burden on banks and the people. We need to encourage and nurture wealth-creation – and then get the heck out of the way.

Until we do this, we’ll remain mired in this economic depression – and likely make it deeper and more prolonged by current policies.