What's up with Gold?

[theoakman]

see post above about derivatives - exactly what i'm talking about.

if you put up a chart of oil going further back - it has actually deflated in price at it's current levels - not inflated.

So you want to refer to a temporary price spike to justify your thesis? Don't get lost in the volatility. Using your logic, you can conclude that the price of sugar has been going down for 40 years. Oil was $10 a barrel in 1998. At the peak of the housing bubble, it was somewhere around $70. It jumped to $150. It fell to $30 after the deleveraging. It's back at $90. You want to stay focused on a narrow set of data points that span the period of a month or two at most. You have more data do work with. You can look at a 1 year chart, a 5 year chart, a 10 year chart. Oil has been going up, not down. In fact, Oil has done nothing but trend upwards for nearly 24 straight months!