We All Bleed When The Crocodiles Cry

Gold topped $700 an ounce for December futures contracts.

You may recall when it was $270, when oil was $18 a barrel, when gas at the pump was about a dollar. We are not pining wistfully for some bygone era. This was six short years ago.

Even if you own gold, you may not celebrate its rise. It means the reason you bought it — as insurance against the profligate spending, greed, theft and immorality of government — has intensified.

Markets speak. The gold market says our governors — the political caste and their financial masters — are in a bind. They have so bled our economy, the corpse has become uncooperative.

The stock market falls a mere 5 percent, and they panic to pump it up. Government ministers shuffle forth to deliver reassuring fireside chats, while Wall Street hacks and stock touts scream for more easy money, which means more monetary and price inflation.

The Federal Reserve, petrified at the prospect of deflation, obliges.

When did it become the job of government to take money from your pocket to massage financial markets, to stroke lenders and to bed speculators in hedge funds, bonds and housing?

What soiled sheets are these? Will we subsidize every failure and fool from Main Street to Wall Street?

Here is the gold market's answer: Yes, we will.

How panicked are our fearful leaders? Worldwide, because of our financial mess, central bankers pumped enough money into financial markets to add a swimming pool to every owner-occupied home in America. So far.

And the luminaries they are saving already have swimming pools. Tennis courts, too.

Where would you rather spend your money? To save Washington and Wall Street or to improve your street?

Make no mistake, it is your money.

You worked for it, and politicians will take it.

They will take it in higher taxes, of which the Democrats have no shortage of worthy schemes, or they will take it through the tax of monetary inflation, an addiction of all politicians, especially Republicans.

Here is the fix our rulers have gotten in. They live on debt. They are joined at the hip with their bankers, led by the Fed, whose job is to counterfeit money to grow government and enrich the financial elite. This causes prices to rise.

An abysmal failure in its stated mission to stabilize prices, the central bank nevertheless must make a show of doing it, lest the populace burn it to the ground when a stick of butter requires a week's wages.

Meanwhile, the overpriced, overbought and overhyped stock market crashes. Market players demand the Fed steroid injection of more monetary inflation.

The Fed has a choice. Does it hold firm on interest rates to check inflation, or does it lower rates to save speculators and extend the illusion of economic prosperity?

In other words, do we pay the price of a depression today or suffer the depression of outrageous prices tomorrow?

We live in a monetary system backed by nothing but politicians' promises, so suspect that they put "In God We Trust" on the money.

A revealing story came out last week.

Our president, who in seven years in league with Congress has grown government by 55 percent and buried our future in debt, told a writer he cries a lot.

Men might cry for several reasons.

When they have been hurt, in which case crying is a waste of time and energy.

When they lament the condition of humanity.

When they have done wrong, and so cry in regret.

All of Washington should be in tears. You pick the reason.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.