Gold and the New Flight to Safety

Jeb Handwerger submits:The trade deficit widened unexpectedly this month after the dollar reached extremely oversold levels, which was quite surprising to Wall Street. Usually, a weaker dollar should lead to an increase of exports of U.S. goods; however, the exact opposite occurred. This further signifies the global economic slow down despite record government stimulus, a devalued dollar and artificially induced low interest rates. The market and the employment situation are no better off now than they were previously.Despite Washington’s attempts to prevent a depression through spending, investors are beginning to lose hope in what the Fed and Congress are doing to prevent a collapse of the markets into new lows.Yesterday, as predicted, the House created a $26 billion job bill that will supposedly prevent government layoffs and expand the job market for government workers. Washington is trying to alleviate high unemployment by creating more government jobs. That is not real job creation. Incidentally, the previous employment numbers were mildly inflated due to the recent influx of temporary Census workers and did not accurately reflect the true numbers of unemployed Americans.