An easier way of judging if gold is going to keep going up is our annual account deficit. Since the chinese have stopped buying our debt, we need to come up with a trillion dollars (annually) to fill that hole. Given that our newly elected congress here in the U.S. is struggling just to get $100 billion cut, I don't see any way that Ben can avoid hitting the button on another $900 billion after QE2 is over. But oh yes, he's just "reinvesting" the interest from the last trillion so he'll only be printing off $500 billion this time compared to $600 billion the last time. I can just see it now- "Federal Reserve scales back POMO Schedule to $500 billion."

And Maria Bartaromo will say it with a straight face....

We live in a surreal world.