Investors relyon indices to help understand how a market is moving, and perhaps even how it might move in the future.

All us crazy Gold bugs are ready to accept the apology of gurus and strategists that have filled the airways and internet with the unrelenting drivel on buying paper equities over the past two decades.

Since we last visited rhodium, the news has been favorable for the future value of the metal. Deutsche Bank announced the creation of an ETC, Europe’s version of an ETF, for rhodium. While that news is favorable, seems the market got a little ahead of the reality.

Appears Scotty got it wrong again. We said to beam us up, and he beamed us back. All of a sudden we seem to have returned to 2008. Perhaps, though, we should not be so tough on Scotty. The Federal Reserve had a hand on the controls too, continuing the longest running stretch of asset price distortions in all of history. Think of 97-year-old sports team with one winning season, 1953.

Given some adverse short-term developments, Rhodium has held up quite well. Japanese earthquake is having some impact on automobile production. Rhodium is one of the catalysts used in converters in the auto industry.

What a wonderful and glorious time to talk with you. With a reduction in U.S. government spending to avoid a shutdown of the government, greatest political change in 60 years of U.S. history has taken another step. What are the implications of this historic event?

Why do you suppose that gasoline prices at stations on the corner near your home generally post the same price? While the companies might contend that their product’s secret additive will make your car run faster, last longer, and cause your love life to be better, most of us cannot tell the difference.

Last week in the game of world monetary poker, the ECB raised the limit. Now the Federal Reserve will have to demonstrate it has what it takes to play poker with the big boys.

It is the Gold coin, however, that gave the Silver coin both utility and value. Silver coins were the “poor man’s coins”. Gold in this case, the provider of utility and value, is the dog. Silver is the tail.

Not in many decades has a mainstream American business publication reminded readers that some innovative thinking has occurred in the field of economics since the British Socialist Keynes introduced his ideas for government control of economic activity.

Technological advances are often left out of much of the discussion when talking about precious metals. Excitement over rare earths, for example, has always assumed that alternatives, either in metals or due to technology, would not be developed. High prices do motivate researchers. For example, alternatives to expensive palladium might exist.