There seems to be some market sentiment that there will be a 40%...

There seems to be some market sentiment that there will be a 40% chance the US will go back into recession.

I tend to agree, the stimulus package has helped the banking sector but not economic growth.

I can see a repeat of the 87 gold spike, but I do think this will be a little different. Gold has a lot of fundamental support, there will be new highs.

In other words it has two driving forces, consumer demand and investor security. This is different than 87 where the driving force was mainly security. This should result in two different market forces competing for the same metal and result in larger price movement.

I do not think that a recession will last long because most of the retail market is probably controled by less than 100 companies. This has resulted in a monopoly and the margins are between 700 and 4000% retail which means there is a lot of room for discounting to restimulate spending.

Some company profits short term could drop between 30 to 60%, in an effort to move retail stock. This is not an issue when you have 700% margins. There will only be an issue if they are overweight with debt.