The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

The gold rally that began last fall and drove gold through the $1,200 resistance level in late November doesn't seem to be panning out the way the rallies of 2005 and 2007 did. In this exclusive Gold Report interview, Gold Newsletter editor and publisher Brien Lundin admits he's a bit worried about this run's breakout. He hasn't lost hope, he says, but "we really need to clear $1,250 over the next six to eight weeks to validate the continuance of this as another one of these major gold rallies" that would carry gold up to the $1,350 to $1,500 range that he had anticipated. However that turns out, he expects gold to remain strong and gold stocks, particularly juniors, to outperform the market in general. Brien is stoked on silver, too, and in fact in relative terms expects it to rise further and faster than gold.

The Gold Report: It's been a fun quick ride up to $1,200 gold and another little correction. Where do you see us going from here?

The 2009 Financial Report Of The U.S. Government Is Out - America's Economic Goose Is Cooked

The 2009 Financial Report Of The U.S. Government has finally been released, and the news is not good.  It basically confirms much of what we already know - that the United States government is a complete financial mess.  The U.S. government budget deficit for 2009 was a record-setting 1.417 trillion dollars.  The total liabilities of the U.S. government rose from 12.178 trillion dollars at the end of 2008 to 14.123 trillion dollars by the end of 2009.  At their present rates of growth, the interest on the national debt and spending on entitlement programs will gobble up almost every single dollar of federal revenue by the end of the decade. 

Throughout the report, the word "unsustainable" is repeatedly used. 

A day after confidently assuring ("You bet your sweet life!") that he still chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel became the second consecutive Democrat to get booted as head of the tax-writing panel amid a highly-publicized corruption scandal.