Gold quotes lurched sharply higher yesterday, and we take it as especially bullish that the news media tripped over their own feet trying to explain why. Reuters reported that prices surged because of “safe-haven demand due to ongoing fears about euro zone credit contagion.” How’s that for lame analysis? The Wall Street Journal didn’t do much better: “Gold made a sudden, sharp move higher, a jump many attributed to fears of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.” Shouldn’t someone point out to these...

The mirage of economic recovery conjured up by our political leaders and a credulous news media dimmed and flickered in the harsh light of reality on Friday, when grim employment figures for May sent stocks into one of their steepest dives of the year. Although 431,000 jobs were added last month, most of the workers were census-takers hired temporarily by the government. Even that figure evidently was ginned-up, since it appears that many of the workers had been laid off during intervals when there...

Although the news media have tried without success to portray the Tea Partiers as racist right-wing agitators, the movement will only continue to gain strength and mainstream support as state and local budget issues come to a boil. All politics is local, as they say, and the battle lines are being drawn in cities and towns across the U.S. for what could eventually turn into a civil war between taxpayers and public employees. Private-sector workers are understandably angered in these very hard...

Gotta love those inflationists! We enjoy getting in their faces now and then because their nutty ideas, particularly that inflation is worth worrying about at the moment, can only confuse and misdirect people who are struggling to sort out the facts for themselves. Imagine waiting…and waiting…and waiting for inflation to “break out,” as the inflationists have been doing all too patiently since 1991. That’s when the Fed put pedal to the metal to escape the drag of recession. At the time, virtually...

The action on Wall Street is starting to remind us of Harlem Globetrotters shtick. Yesterday’s comic show conjured up Meadowlark Lemon at the free-throw line: He pumps once, he pumps twice, then he sends the ball arcing toward the basket. Half-a-dozen guys leap for the rim, only to see the ball, which has been tethered to Meadowlark’s finger by an elastic cord, snap back into his hand. Something like that occurred yesterday on the NYSE, where stocks opened on a vaulting arc, only to be hauled back...