<strong>YES</strong></p><p>It&rsquo;s too late for anyone to pretend that the U.S. government, whether under President Barack Obama or anyone else, can divert our nation from long-term economic decline. The U.S. is increasingly in a state of political, economic and moral paralysis, caught between the &ldquo;rock&rdquo; of protracted recession and the &ldquo;hard place&rdquo; of terminal government debt.</p><p>Government debt is fundamentally inflationary. For a generation, the U.S. dollar has been inflating at an increasing rate, with the economy being kept in a growth posture by selling our debt abroad or allowing foreigners holding dollars to buy property and other assets on our soil.</p><p>The system has ruined the value of the currency. The inflation caused by large issues of bank-created loans is seized upon by the government, which goes along because inflation reduces the cost of its deficits. Investors buy Treasury bonds denominated in Federal Reserve notes and then watch their value evaporate. In fact, Federal Reserve notes have lost more than 95 percent of their value since they were first introduced.</p><p>Moreover, it&rsquo;s additional inflation caused by bank-generated interest that drives up the costs of goods and services, forcing all in the economy to try to defend themselves by raising their prices to the max.</p><p><em>Richard C. Cook, The Market Oracle</em></p><p><strong>NO</strong></p><p>With the same fervor that causes pundits to prematurely declare the death of the dollar, so too are worries about inflation bubbling up. You hear people saying, &ldquo;Of course inflation is coming; just look at the soaring price of gold!&rdquo;</p><p>As a former gold trader, I can tell you it has been a long time since gold traded as an inflation hedge. Rather gold has traded as a fear asset or a risk asset.</p><p>When investors think the financial world is coming to an end, they sometimes turn to gold. This is in line with my dearly departed step-grandmother, who said that it was the gold that her mother sewed in the lining of her cloth coat that allowed her to escape the Nazis.</p><p>Alternatively, when you see stocks, bonds and gold all rising concurrently as the dollar is dropping, that&rsquo;s a pretty good indication that old fashioned greed is back on the scene.</p><p>There&rsquo;s no inflation right now and in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Fed is more worried about deflation than inflation. For the time being, the Fed is probably right &mdash; there&rsquo;s no evidence of inflation of any kind.</p><p><em>Jill Schlesinger, CBS&rsquo; MoneyWatch.com.</em>