By Brad Zigler

Real-time Monetary Inflation (last 12-months): 2.5%

This week, the short end of the yield spectrum ticked up and gold spreads widened to indicate an expectation of eventual tightening by the Federal Reserve. Like last week, though, the interest rate boost held an accompanying rally in commodity prices in check.

We started our previous essay by describing several interesting facts about the U.S. Dollar. We wrote the following:

We've recently read something that can elucidate the enormous, almost incomprehensible, size of the U.S. government debt. The numbers are so huge that it is difficult for most people to get a handle them.