Ever heard of a trend? Yes it bounces up and down, but the prevalent direction is most certainly down. I.e. look at long term 50 year charts not 10 year and you can see it's crashing faster and faster over time.We are going into debt levels never seen before. George Bush's less than half a trillion deficit sucked, but it's nothing compared to the trillions upon trillions of dollars of debt/stimulus the current admin. is pushing through. I couldn't stand Bush, but it's odd that the same people blaming his $400+ billion deficits for the economic collapse don't mind if Obama plans to spend $1.2+ trillion in deficits (so in total more money than that) every year for 10 years to fix the problem... This will NECESSARILY destroy the dollar over the next decade in an exponential manner as the dollar will [rightly] be seen as a declining asset and be traded away. It is obvious in my mind that America is the most corrupt country in the world simply by looking at the fact that we are the only country in the world where hemp is STILL illegal to grow. You can't get high from it, but you can make 25,000 products with it from oil and plastics to textiles (can replace cotton completely), food, all paper was made from hemp before it was banned and now it's all made from trees. To this very day tons of people still believe the government made lie that hemp and marijuana are the same thing.. The gov. doesn't still make the claim, but they are left with BS reasons for its illegality and most Americans don't even know what it is anyway, because it's been illegal for 70 years.Too many people believe the government does not lie (on both sides)......