The policies of the politicians have been to inflate, inflate, and inflate some more. And they have been quite successful in doing that. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the dollar has lost something like 97% of is purchasing power. So the boys controlling the printing presses have done quite well in their creation of deflation, except for a period of time in the 1930s when the purchasing power rose considerably.

The question in my mind is not whether the Fed and other policymakers will try to inflate. Indeed I think they will.

The mutual fund is now on schedule for a summer 2010 launch.

Oil Market Summary for 02/22/2010 to 02/26/2010

Crude oil broke through the $80 a barrel ceiling repeatedly during the week but kept falling back as hedge funds placed big bets on the Euro’s decline.

The fiscal drama in Greece held global markets hostage much of the week as worries about the impact of the Greek crisis on the euro outweighed comments from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke about continued low interest rates in the U.S., pushing the euro down against the dollar and damping crude prices.

The euro recovered some ground on Friday amid new reports of Euro

The economy grew in the fourth quarter by 5.9%, the most in years. The adjusted monetary base is exploding. Bank reserves are literally through the roof. The Fed is flooding money into the system in an effort to get banks to lend. An historically normal response by banks (to increase lending) would have been massively inflationary, causing the Fed to stomp on the brakes. Despite raising the almost meaningless discount rate (as who uses it?), this week Ben Bernanke assured Congress of an easy monetary policy, with rates remaining low for a long time.

Bernanke: Record-low rates still needed, as reported by USA Today, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday that record-low interest rates are still needed to ensure that the U.S. economic recovery will last and to help cushion the sting of high unemployment.