Constance,

I take that as a YES.

And as for your question "Can you tell me why the Katyn Massacre of the Polish elite was blamed on the Germans until it was discovered in the mid 90's that it was in fact the Soviets?"
Yes I can. Stalin looked to shift the blame. The Nazis were the only others he could credibly blame, and once it became clear what else the Nazis had done, the accusation looked credible. However AIUI the truth came out much earlier than the mid 90s.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

BJelly,

The claims of Jim Rickards are ludicrous. There's no plausible mechanism for the events he forecasts to occur. A devaluation of the dollar will cause share values on the American market to rise. Falling returns aren't much of a problem when interest rates do likewise, and trying to extrapolate a constant trend was never likely to deliver a sensible result.

Whether the USA enters a depression depends on what economic policies they implement: if they try to take more money out of the economy than they put in (aka run a surplus) when the private sector is weak, it will damage growth (and probably fail to achieve a surplus). But if they implement a stimulus, the economy can quickly recover.

The USA's debt is far from catastrophic. There's a slight chance that it could necessitate a tax rise at some time in the future, but having to pay a bit more tax is not a catastrophe.

I'm guessing Jim's bought gold and is trying to get more people to buy it to stop the gold price from falling further.

<UN there were now 60 million refugees looking for refuge. They are still looking and the number is being added to at a rate of 50000 per day.>

One word to the author of this article. Contraception.

something the Pope is also against.