According to some experts, after the peak is reached, the production rate will slowly decline until it reaches near zero while the price shoots upward. At that point, we will have pretty much mined all the economic ore deposits that are present on the planet.

Perhaps the first and most important is the fact that the foreign exchange value of the US Dollar has been going down steadily for several months. As the value of the Dollar goes down, the price of goods in Dollar terms tend to go up…

Some financial commentators have speculated that bitcoin and other virtual currencies have captured a portion of funds that would have been invested in gold. I find it a bit ironic that people who invest in precious metals would even consider another fiat currency.

This past month has been filled with headline-grabbing news events and, for a change, it was not only politics that dominated those news stories, but rather financial markets themselves, with gold and mining shares grabbing a major share of attention.