Madamswer, I hope you don't mind me jumping into your discussion...

Madamswer, I hope you don't mind me jumping into your discussion with Wombat.

To Wombat's point, I'd offer the permanent trade deficit of the United States as evidence enough of an economy that still has not recovered from the 2000/2001 tech bubble.

If the US was a legitimate and properly functioning economy, they wouldn't have to rely on the kind generosity of their trading partners to effectively ''give'' them valuable goods in exchange for dollars which are intrinsically worth nothing (see trade deficit once again).

No other country in the world can consistently run big trade deficits over time and not suffer major consequences, the US is not immune to these consequences, it's just that it has not yet dawned on the rest of the world that the dollar is worth significantly less than the markets would indicate.

I suspect the gains that Gold is going to make over the next 10 years will allow it to absolutely crush the S & P or Dow over just about any time frame.

Moreover, I don't think one can point to the ''recovery'' of any stock market as being indicative of a recovery of the broader economy. Global stock markets over the last 10 years have been subject to massive amounts of QE. It's almost like pumping a bodybuilder full of steroids and then when he weighs 150kgs, proclaiming how healthy he must be.

Finally, the inflated US dollar makes US markets more attractive than they ought to be, if the dollar was fairly valued (at zero or half of what it is now), the US markets wouldn't attract anywhere near the capital they currently do and gold would be valued much higher than it currently is.

The departure that the world has taken from gold over the last 40 years is a turn down the wrong track, we're about to meet up once again with reality.

Although, I could be completely wrong

Cheers
Ivan