Here's an entertaining scene from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Russia from Tom Lasseter of McClatchey.  I suppose having planted questions like the Putin telethon is a step up from the Obama visit, which was banned from most television. 

Freshman Pavel Yankovsky was among the first to take the microphone: Nervously, he inquired about the financial crisis and why it started in the U.S. Like all the students who spoke, his English was good and his question seemed well rehearsed.

Clinton walked the audience through an abbreviated history of bad mortgages, derivatives and the false notion that free markets are infallible.

"It all seemed like a great idea at the time," she said, launching into an explanation of how the need for more checks and balances in the economy reminds one of the balance of power in the American government.

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Rare earth elements (REEs) have been the mystery metals of the mining world for years. Now, suddenly, everyone’s heard about them.

Before we delve into the reasons behind all the publicity, here’s the basic skinny on REEs: One, they are rare, at least sort of. Two, they are indispensable to modern technology. Three, the number of active, dedicated producers is tiny, with more than 90% of the world’s supply coming from China.

If you took high school chemistry, you probably remember the periodic table of the elements. But if you’re like most of us, even if you pulled a 95 on the chem final, you may not recall many of the details today. And there’s a better than even chance you never bothered to memorize the names of the REEs. It’s time to get reacquainted.

They’re generally clustered in a separate grouping at the bottom of the table, are known collectively as the

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As the equities market gyrates, gold bugs are getting their vindication. Better late then never, I suppose.

It is pretty clear where the folks selling their share of the equities market yesterday put their cash. As investors look for a safe haven, the gold market is booming today.

Gold prices settled today at $978.50 per ounce, an increase of $22.20 from yesterday’s final figure. The action is a surefire sign that investors are getting nervous.

It was almost a year ago when the precious metal entered one of its most volatile periods. Over the span of several months, gold prices ran from $800 to $900, back down to $700 and then the whole back to the $1,000 mark and beyond.

As more and more analysts and investors claim the equities market is topped out, plenty of folks are beginning to wonder if we are in for another volatile autumn.

While a repeat of last

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There is suddenly a lot of interest in the idea that the federal government will make holding gold illegal, an example of which is “Is the Confiscation of Gold by Certain Central Banks Likely?” by Julian D. W. Phillips of GoldForecaster.com.

He reminds us that “in 1933 the US government banned the ownership of gold by US citizens and purchased all but rare gold coins from the US public. They did this, at $20 an ounce. Two years later they revalued gold to $35 an ounce, a 75% revaluation” which instantly gave the government a lot of new, but still 100% gold-backed money to spend!

What a blatant, brazen theft! And nobody says anything! But let me take a few bucks out of the employee pension fund, petty cash drawer or the coffee jar, then it is some kind of “big deal” around here and everyone wants me to get fired! What

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Whether it’s heading up or down, the oil market usually asserts itself as the leader of the commodities world.  Having plunged from levels around $130 per barrel this time last year all the way down to the $40s, the market has spent the last couple of months striking to the upside again.

As I’ve mentioned in recent issues, oil had near-term targets of $70 in its sights. It hasn’t disappointed, shooting past the $73 mark late last week - a level not seen since the first week of November 2008.

On a technical basis, because oil has not only moved above, but also stayed above all the major moving averages (including the all-important 200-day average), it’s now got $80 in its sights. If any pullback is going to occur, which should happen after solid runs like this, the move down should hold at the $65 per barrel range.

On a fundamental note, we’ve

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The big daddy of underground investors, Jim Rogers, says the best way to play this downturn is to focus on commodities and agriculture ETFs (hat tip The Daily Crux). The primary logic behind this play is simple to understand.

The global population is peaking and is consuming more food than it’s producing. This will make food scarcer and cause it to rise in price.

But there are more subtle reasons for investing in commodities right now. Rogers says that although stocks may touch crazy valuations in the near term, they may be in worthless currencies – a vista Notes readers will be familiar with. This from a recent interview with Rogers in the Economic Times:

Central banks all over the world have printed huge amounts of money, and the real economy is not strong enough for all this money to be absorbed… so, it’s going into stocks and real assets such as commodities. It’s a

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The Federal Reserve is puzzled. So are we. The Fed is puzzled that Treasury bond yields are soaring. We are puzzled that the Fed is puzzled. Of course bond yields are soaring! Why wouldn’t they be?

If you happen to be the world’s largest debtor, and you happen to need another $2 trillion of credit from the rest of the world, you should not be surprised that your creditors demand a higher interest rate on the funds they provide. And yet, some members of the Federal Reserve are perplexed by this result.

“The Federal Reserve is not really sure what is driving the sharp rise in long-dated bond yields,” Reuters News reports. “Do rising U.S. Treasury yields and a steepening yield curve suggest an economic recovery is more certain, meaning less need for safe haven government bonds and a healthy demand for credit?…Or does the steepening yield curve mean investors are worried

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I thought that I had a pretty good handle on how much “stimulus” money Congress and the Fed have spent so far, ranging, as it does, in the zillions of dollars…

So I was taken aback when Addison Wiggin of Agora Financial wrote, “$7.2 trillion is a lot of money. That’s what D.C. has poured into ‘our’ bailout so far.” Wow!

Trying to keep from peeing my pants in horror, I think to myself, “Hell yeah, that’s a lot of money… Because it is roughly half of everything this country makes in a year! Half of American GDP!” which, unfortunately, ended in “P”, which sounds like “pee”, which was just enough of a subliminal suggestion that… Well, never mind.

But if creating that much money is not enough to scare the piss out of you, too, then consider it just a Mogambo Warm-Up Test (MWUT) to see if

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There is a lot of buzz about a Congressional hearing on mark-to-market accounting, scheduled for Thursday.  Much of the information is inaccurate or misleading.  Astute investors should understand the purpose of the hearing and what might happen. Background When Congress passed the original TARP legislation it required the SEC to study the  possible link between accounting rules and bank failures, reporting within 90 days.  They complied with a series of round tables, public commentary and a report.  This was the last action of the Christopher Cox Chairmanship, with Cox and senior staffers leaving immediately thereafter.  The recommendation was to keep the rule and do minor tweaks.  This is not what Congress expected or hoped for. The Obama Administration We have watched closely for a sign of interest from the Obama team concerning this issue, but there has not been much.  Paul Volcker, a senior advisor, favors a change, but there is no sign ...

Merry Christmas-Eve-Eve! Or A href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FestivusSTRONGHappy Festivus/STRONG/A, if you're so inclined. Let the Airing of Grievances begin!br brHere's my chart for today -- a monthly chart of gold. Note how the recent uptrend has been tested but hasn't broken (yet anyway). In fact, RSI, a measure of momentum, is now giving a buy signal.brimg style=WIDTH: 490px alt= src=http://local.content.compendiumblog.com/uploads/user/7e88b461-578b-47f3-88ec-038e212ad053/aa0ff38d-9bb9-44a5-bba5-8be30d8f6977/gold.png _width=75 _height=75brI think gold could enter the New Year in a very positive position. Still, watch the euro-us dollar relationship that I posted about yesterday. That is probably the real key to what happens with gold.brbrHere is the other news and analysis I'm reading ...br br A href=http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=enart=14054STRONGU.S. debt approaches insolvency; Chinese currency reserves at risk/STRONG/A According to new figures published by Bloomberg in recent days, the American government has employed a total of 8.549 trillion dollars to stop the financial crisis. This means a total of about 24-25.4 trillion dollars of direct or indirect public debt ...