nbsp;Here is my latest Money and Markets piece ...brbra href=http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/financial-mayhem-to-fuel-gold%e2%80%99s-next-surge-3-28362 style=font-weight: bold;Financial Mayhem to Fuel Gold’s Next Surge?/a by Sean Brodrick Wednesday, November 26, 2008 | 7:30 AM pLast week, I wrote about how our oil-rich friends in the Middle East are buying gold hand over fist. It turns out they’re not the only ones. The latest figures from the World Gold Council show a frenzy of activity … a href=http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/financial-mayhem-to-fuel-gold%e2%80%99s-next-surge-3-28362[More...]/a/p

As you know (if you've been reading the issues), I'm watching the US dollar closely. Let's look at the daily chart again ...Nothing is certain, but I do expect the US dollar to go lower from here.Meanwhile, I did an interview with Phil at HoweStreet.com yesterday. You can listen to that here: http://tinyurl.com/4pudt4.And my MoneyandMarkets.com column is up. It's about the Wall Street bail out ... and go-o-o-o-old...Government Debt Rescue a Boon for Gold!by Sean BrodrickWednesday, September 24, 2008 7:30 AMTreasury Secretary Paulson and Congress are hammering out details of the government's rescue plan for financial institutions, and we don't know what final impact it will have on the debt crisis ... [More...]Finally, if it's not clear that I'm not in favor of the Wall Street bailout as it is proposed

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  I talked to Phil at HoweStreet.com yesterday. You can listen HERE.And yesterday in MoneyandMarkets.com I wrote about Mexico’s supergiant oil field, Cantarell, which is in some serious trouble. Here’s that …A Storm Called Cantarellby Sean Brodrick Wednesday, September 03, 2008 7:30 AMThe oil industry along the Louisiana coast got off lightly from Hurricane Gustav. While 1.3 million barrels of oil and seven billion cubic feet of natural gas per day stopped pumping temporarily, ... [More...]XX Sean’s note: After I published that story, I then found another story on Mexican oil woes. It’s interesting …Cantarell Is Not Mexico's Only Oil Production ProblemThere are problems in two other large oil fields, the Chicontepec Basin and Ku-MaloobZaap. These two fields make up 72% of Mexico's non-Cantarell proven reserves. The fields differ significantly from Cantarell in terms of geology, ...

Congress is up in arms. And the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is on the warpath. Their target: Speculators in the natural resources market. The CFTC said this week that it's investigating a dramatic rise in cotton prices from earlier this year. It also plans to tighten some rules that apply to investors in the broader agricultural futures markets. Those steps come just a few days after the regulatory body said it would investigate oil trading activity to see if prices are being manipulated. Meanwhile, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee just held a hearing on commodities speculation. At the gathering, legendary hedge fund manager George Soros said: "There is a strong prima facie case against institutional investors pursuing a commodity index-buying strategy ... It is intellectually dishonest, potentially destabilizing and ...