Gold!

On the side of this Blog page is a cute little applet that shows and tracks the price of gold. I don't own any gold, mostly because while it is a great hedge against hyper-inflation, I do not do much in the way of $1000 transactions. Oh, a house, and a camera, and an occasional car, but other than that? For hyper-inflation, I stick to Silver, heavier per value, but its nice twenty dollar per troy ounce¹ increments far more liquid.
BUT, Gold is an excellent barometer of the health of wealth. And in the last 40 hours, I have noticed something. Gold has increased against the dollar by 20% - It went from $775 per troy ounce spot price to $925.10 per ounce. This is an increase of almost exactly 20%. Somebody somewhere with lots of Money² thinks the world just went to hell in a handcart

¹ Not spot - what you or I would actually pay to hold it in our hot little hands.
²First mis-type was Monet. Probably have lots of those too.

Good New from Mombai!

This just in: (CNN News (true))
President Elect Obama has been briefed on the conflict in Mombai the city in India formerly known as Bombay. President Elect has put his transition team to work on the situation.
Unfortunately, he is prevented from accomplishing his goals due to an obscure rule preventing his control of the military until January.
This also noted: Bush is aware of the events.