Commentary -- In 2002 and 2003 I said invest in Gold -- and I did -- and I turned 70% over on it.

In 2003 I realized real estate was a better real asset than gold and that low income real estate hedged against deflation better than gold, and I said invest in it. I've made enough money to not only support myself (and Jeff Schoep and Cliff Herrington) for going on three years but I've accumulated several million in assets as well.

And, in 2004, I gave five stocks that I liked, which, while they didn't all perform spectacular, gave about a 100% return on them as a portfolio.

So I'm not an economist. I'm no Ludwig Von Mises. I never had the brilliant idea of forcing Germany to pay ridiculous reparations for the First World War and I never bankrupted the Austrian economy and my homeland seconds ahead of an angry mob (Von Mises did both -- but Libertarians always seem to forget that -- their cover story is he fled "the Nazis" -- four years before Austria went National Socialist). But I've been more right than wrong about investments for the past four going on five years and I've made myself some opinions -- including some ones I will share today.

What motivates me to write is that I saw a press release from the International Monetary Fund the other dat warning about dollar instability and "ordering" the US -- though I don't think even the IMF can order the US at this point -- to correct its trade deficit with China. Funny that this came as I was working on the free trade with China issue of National Socialist -- but significant.

Americans don't understand trade or the economy, and this is because there are a lot of people making money off both, and they would prefer to keep it that way. But we ran a $262 billion dollar trade deficit with China last year -- and we only have about $8 trillion dollars in circulation -- and that's bad.