The West is doomed to a long period of austerity, as the middle class is squeezed and governments curb spending.

ECONOMIST: Frugal ideas are spreading from East to West

However, I also do not look at one single time period (like the nearly 38 year period from 1972 through 2010) and presume that every asset class just happened to have a proper balance of its bull and bear extremes.

FORBES: Gold's Twelve Month March To $3,800

Even in a period and a country in which upper-class boys were kept under permanent house arrest in the nursery before being exiled to their public school, the brilliant, the beautiful, the appalling Jennie Jerome was the most uncaring of mothers.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

He was for extending the ones for the middle class and he was not willing to see middle-class Americans, as we were in a very fragile period economically, have their taxes raised substantially.

WHITEHOUSE: Press Briefing