The price performance of gold recently has all sorts of armchair economists waxing philosophical on the idea that this is the advent of a price “bubble.” While certainly everyone has and is entitled to their opinion, there are other features of humanity that we all possess, and much like many opinions are best obscured from view.

Declaring that gold is in a “bubble” demonstrates complete ignorance of or disregard for the fundamental drivers of the almost 10-year ascent of gold. And saying that the price is forming a bubble implies that, like the real estate bubble, the tech bubble and the tulip bubble, the price must necessarily “pop” and return to a sustainable long term average.

The breaking of the old record high price for gold Tuesday was no surprise to long-time critics of American, and thus global, financial policy. Regardless of how much spin you can generate from a compromised media, the laws of supply and demand re-assert themselves inevitably.

Will this bring the mainstream investor crowd any closer to the understanding that the gold standard is precisely that, and has not been diminished but merely obscured by the powerful marketing forces of the United States Treasury and her feckless sister, The United States Federal Reserve?

Not likely. When anything -- be it stock, bond, currency or commodity -- reaches a new high, the impetus for selling into strength and taking profit off the table are enhanced dramatically. With gold’s new record high, there are plenty of holders of bullion who started acquiring it in the first years of the millennium who are now sitting on profit equivalent to three times the money.

Those who read the contrarian and alternative financial commentators may well be forgiven for wondering why the financial doomsday oft predicted hasn’t quite materialized. The financial crisis heralded by the crash in October 2008, preceded by the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, among others, by all accounts was the tip of the iceberg and the advent of the Great Depression of our age.

Exuberant markets and slap-happy finance ministers, combined with record profits at the investment banks of Mordor, or Wall Street, are supposed to convince us that the worst is over, calamity has been averted, and with sober and moist eyes we roll up our sleeves to prevent the ghosts in the machine from re-emerging. A more masterful symphony of optical delusion has never been conducted, and the invisible puppeteers manipulating the strings of marionettes Ben Bernanke and Timmy Geithner are smug in their continued anonymity.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to rise, along with foreclosures and delinquencies, and but for select industries, decline and bankruptcy are the measure of balance sheets, not growth.

Companies like Aurizon Mines Ltd. (AZK) have provided some of the best investment performance in the first half of 2009 where gains are tough to come by in any sector, and uncertainty persists. Aurizon’s disciplined approach to resource development at its Quebec-based Casa Berardi project has resulted in steady production above 150,000 ounces annually, and exploration success that will add years to the mine’s life once incorporated into 43-101 compliant reserve estimates.

Aurizon itself has seen its share price improve steadily since the turmoil in late 2008 brought its share price down as low as $1.50. Since touching a high of $6.28 in April, the price continues to hold in a range above $4.00.

Goldcorp’s (NYSE:GG) announcement Monday of its seventh monthly dividend payment to shareholders of $0.015 per common share underscored the company’s strong growth and attractiveness to investors.

What is the significance, you may wonder, of the Russian Finance Minister suggesting the reserve currency days of the U.S. dollar are surely numbered, followed the next day by a statement from his deputy contradicting him thoroughly?

Apparently a coincidence, Japan’s finance minister just happens to state publicly that same day that Japan has ‘full confidence” in the U.S. dollar.

Somebody, it would seem, is running around the international backstage putting the arm on government finance types to wax supportive of the U.S. dollar. As a result, we now have press headlines issued minute by minute that contradict each other completely.

Here we go again. The forces of legitimate money versus the incumbent purveyors of the candy floss economy squared off at the $1,000 an ounce line over which yet another battle will be fought. Arrayed against either side are formidable new elements and tried and true old ones. As usual, the first volley has been catapulted over the walls of the hucksters by the defenders of the essential timeless truth of gold’s naturally stored value against the counterfeit paper currencies.

The liabilities of the enemy have increased, and the short positions in the COMEX market are sufficiently stacked that the big bank defenders simply cannot allow gold to win decisively. G7 governments are allied against gold to a man, while emerging economic behemoths China and Russia stand in opposition.

All of the glad-handing, back-slapping self-congratulatory accolades that the Obama administration and Wall Street are heaping upon themselves in the press is scant comfort for the vast majority of citizens now unemployed and of no fixed address. For them, this economic crisis isn’t so much a temporary crisis as a permanent redistribution of wealth and living standards representative of a downgrade in the quality of life.

A dispassionate eye, equitably minded, would regard the current gross imbalance among haves and have-nots as a simple case of injustice, easily rectified. Those traveling daily in jets and Escalades leveraged the savings and credit ratings of the common people to agglomerate assets onto their own balance sheets to satisfy a sense of entitlement derived from an overpriced education.

The irony of the emergence of a Swine Flu pandemic amidst an economic contraction brought on by glutinous gorging on credit and real estate in the United Casinos of America is surely not lost on barbed minds. The insistence by the World Health Organization that it be termed the far less ominous sounding "H1N1" is evidence of our collective predisposition to avoid calling a spade a spade if it has negative implications. That predisposition will be viewed by posterity, should there be any, as a terminal flaw in the human character of our era.

The manifestation of a Swine Flu pandemic in the midst of a global economic meltdown does not bode well for the ‘recovery’, which, depending on who you listen to, is either well under way or years away. Our insistence on ignoring the simple solutions to both problems may yet herald the biggest historic instance of mass delusion and subsequent extinction of our kind.

Newmont Mining (NYSE:NEM) and Rare Element Resources Ltd. [TSX.V:RES] established a joint venture in June 2006 to explore Rare Element's Bear Lodge Project near Sundance, Wyoming. Under the terms of the deal, Newmont is spending US$5 million over five years to earn a 65% participating interest in the gold and other minerals on the property, but not the 'rare-earth' elements or any uranium. Newmont can earn an additional 15% by financing the project through feasibility. Rare Element Resources is advancing the rare earths project themselves at this time.

Rare Earths

It’s normal for the CEO of a public company to speak glowingly of its products and prospects in complete contradiction to whatever reality might be showing. Have you ever heard of a company president saying, “Well things don’t look that great for us, and our future isn’t very exciting either.”

The answer is probably ”yes”, but only after they’ve filed for Chapter 11.

Deepening economic strife is starting to erode financial viability in many industries. Foremost among them is the airline industry, according to Giovanni Bisignani, CEO of the International Air Transport Association. He indicated that 2009 was shaping up to be worse for airlines than the period immediately following the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Most major airlines are reporting rapidly diminishing travellers, and have resorted to fare cuts and flight suspensions to counter the effect of the lost revenue, a situation that can only worsen the plight of the companies in the long term. The question is, which airlines are likely to fall first?

Midway Gold (AMEX:MDW) has recently filed an updated Canadian National Instrument 43-101 resource estimate on its Spring Valley gold project, which stipulates 1.8 million ounces of gold across all categories. It is the potential for expansion of this resource to a much larger deposit that has induced Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX) to sign a definitive Joint Venture Agreement with Midway that will see Barrick inject $30 million over 5 years into further development of the Spring Valley Project.

"This resource update represents an 85% increase in contained gold at the Spring Valley deposit using an 0.006 opt gold cut-off," said Alan Branham, President and CEO of Midway Gold Corp. "The efficiency of the Midway team resulted in growth of the resource at a cost of less than $10 per ounce last year. The Spring Valley project continues to hold strong potential and we look forward to more growth in the future."

With Editing by Mark Rayfield

There are, in fact, two economies at work in the world, and both are global. One must die, as it undermines the health and robustness of the other. It is, truly, a parasitic economy that has evolved as a direct result of business influences, particularly from very large capital management firms, the biggest hedge funds, banks, and insurance companies. Influences at a level so great and all-pervasive that it is able to demand and be granted regulatory advantages to enhance the efficiency with which it achieves its ends.

Last week's rampant speculation that Barrick (NYSE:ABX) and Newmont (NYSE:NEM) were in merger discussions has passed as just so much speculation this week. But is there something more there than the rumor mill might have missed?

The speculation was prompted by statements by Newmont President and CEO Richard O’Brien during an interview with Reuters in which O’Brien suggested that he would be “open to synergies” between Newmont and Barrick operations in Australia and Nevada.

This is the point at which the global economy falls the rest of the way off of the cliff. The false hope raised by the illusion of decisive action on the part of the Obama administration is giving way to Democratic party in-fighting and an increasing public perception that Obama and Geithner are out of their league.

A number of events on the macro economic and political fronts threaten to converge simultaneously to force another major contraction in global markets.

So its happened at last. All pretense of sanity has been summarily discarded in favor of the perpetual feedback loop. The Fed is now purchasing its own currency, kiting checks to itself in a flagrant display of Orwellian-esque doublespeak. The fact that bond traders and mainstream financial commentators hail the development demonstrates the depth of ignorance and/or beguilement prevalent in the collective economic imagination.

Gold’s immediate sprint to positive territory is the only economic signal so far to cast the announcement in its correct light. To categorize it as dollar negative and gold positive is to understate. This is the biggest step yet in the impending demise of the U.S. Dollar.

It took the onset of World War II to lift the world out of the Great Depression that began in 1929.

Ignore the historical hyperbole that claim Roosevelt’s “New Deal” had anything to do with it. It was war, plain and simple, that galvanized the U.S. manufacturing complex into debt-driven growth, and ended the period of stagnation following the economic contraction from 1929 to 34.

The wheels of the perception management apparatus are turning at full speed, as evidenced by the audacious spin chief propaganda-meister Bernard “Tokyo Rose” Bernanke put on more bad economic news following another disastrous day in global markets.

He says the recession will end this year.

Queenston Mining (QNMNF.PK) is a deal I've followed for years. It's seen its ups and downs, but it is, in my opinion, about to permanently transform itself into a gold mining force to be reckoned with. The reason for that conviction is its emerging ability to do deals that are accretive for it and its shareholders. The cornerstone area of focus is the increasingly prolific Kirkland Lake mining camp in northern Ontario, Canada, which is Canada's second largest gold camp with historical production of 37 million ounces of gold.

Queenston is a past producing mining company with a 2.7 million ounce combined historic and recently defined NI 43-101 compliant gold resources. Its property portfolio in Kirkland Lake includes 17 properties covering 14,000 hectares, making it the largest mineral claim holder in the camp. 90 percent of the holdings are owned 100%, and there are 5 joint venture properties with Kirkland Lake Gold (KGLIF.PK). Its six deposits cover some 900 hectares and have produced over 3.4 million ounces of gold historically.