Well, now that the title has hopefully gotten your attention I'd like to talk about the ‘d' and ‘i' words that so many financial types – myself included – throw around so often.  This is due to a reader/subscriber KR's aggravation at my use of the word deflation, which he had thought was meant sarcastically, but then came to find out I am serious when I use it.

First I want to note that I seem to have been pissing everyone off lately, gold bugs (one of which I am) and gold bears in particular. That is due to my writing style being one where if I've got something to say, I say it.  Sometimes that's bad for business, as I can get a little heavy handed.

I'll try to be less heavy handed going forward but in criticizing what I view as promotion with little backing substance (whether bullish or bearish), I don't retract any comments aimed at the type of people that I think are not being square with readers or are simply not doing the work required (i.e. promoting lazy analytical thinking).

So dear gold bugs, if I have offended you by showing my disgust, just remember that anyone writing a blog is a human being as well. Disgust is an emotion and well, blogs are there in part to document opinions and yeh, sometimes feelings. I have written the same things in good times (with gold above 1800) and bad.  Consistency my friends.

Since I do not yet have the emailer's permission to quote him, I'll use his main points in my own words and offer answers to what I have “aggravated” him with.

The Soda Jerk in the photo above was used in a past post inspired by my late friend Jonathan's* colorful words about Bernanke serving up inflationary Tutti Fruities.  Also reference “It's inflation All the Way Baby”, a more recent article using another one of this colorful and quotable man's statements to me (this one from when he and I and what seemed like about 3 other people on the planet became bullish on gold stocks and commodities, and bearish on the pervasive Deflation story, in Q4 2008).