The key in my book: Interest on the debt, some saying it will be 30% of it by 2015. Until that is addressed, there will always be an implosion lurking around the corner.
Doesn't matter. This idea that everyone can just go long the market, long gold, and short the dollar, and make money, is ridiculous. These are three overcrowded bubble trades, IMO. These people are going to get slaughtered in due time.
Long gold and short the dollar has been the way to play for a decade now. Stating that this can't continue.... just because it can't seems to be a bit low in substance no offence. I would bet people in 1980 would have sweared the Dow going up 1500% would never ever happen. But it did! Anyway, I don't get the appeal on wanting to short gold. I'd say there is a tad of emotion there just as in the long gold trade, a fact gold bears like to frown upon so often.
Step outside your box for a second. The world is massively long dollar. The public is massively long dollar. Major nations of the world, their governments & central banks are massively long dollars. "Everyone" is not in on the trade. Most people do not even know the value of gold and are selling their jewelry at a fraction of the spot price. Most people think everything is OK with the USD.
The 1971 post Bretton Woods regime is crumbling. For me, buying gold is not a trade, as much as it is a vote AGAINST that monetary system, and a vote FOR an alternative currency/store of value, whose scarcity is only increasing. When Nixon shut the gold window, the world's population was just under 4 billion. Today it is approaching 7 billion. India and China were largely irrelevant as consumers of goods and energy back then - they didn't exist. The world has changed, and gold is now being purchased by Vietnam, India, and Mauritius. Understand mining operations, energy requirements of mining, and the future of energy costs... and you will see another reason for gold's ascent. The alternative to difficult to mine gold? "Money" comprised of digits on a computer screen made by runaway irresponsible central banks. And you know what? More people still believe in that virtual world of "money" than they do in gold!
It occurs to me now that gold may not take a breather after all. This COULD be the collapse that we have been waiting for to happen. If Gold continues this trend at this rate we will see $2,000 gold by mid May. Thats as long as gold doesnt start to speed up faster than it is now.