It’s hard for me to conceive of eager buyers lining up to score a PC loaded with Vista, the new operating system from Microsoft. But then, I’ve never been able to understand why people would queue to pay good money for tickets to a Madonna concert. Or opt for a $100 enema at a spa. Still, when Dell starts taking phone orders for Vista-loaded computers this weekend, there are bound to be delays getting through. Dell says some of the first customers could have their new PCs as early as Tuesday. Then, presumably,  the lucky buyers will be able to load Office 2007 onto their hard drives and whip any geek on the block. At least for a while.

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But the rest of us should be hoping third-party vendors will find clever ways to keep our WinXP systems running well into the next decade. Personally, I feel like I need Vista and Office 2007 about as badly as I need ringworm. The early reviews suggest that the new Office suite is very different in look and feel from the existing application, and that it will take a lot of training to bring office workers up to speed. Given that most PCs used for business run on Windows, we might anticipate that the shift to Vista will exert a statistically noticeable drag on the nation’s GDP.  Would it be churlish to hope instead that Vista turns out to be the first operating system from Microsoft to lay an egg? Something to wish for, for sure. But I wouldn’t count on it.

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Why Are Rates Rising?

We often find ourselves stifling a gag, or at least a snicker, whenever the conventional wisdom about the U.S. economy is being served up with straight-faced seriousness on CNBC or in some other impregnable redoubt of economic ignorance. A particularly virulent strain of such factually challenged optimism – one more likely to elicit an emetic effect than a snicker or a guffaw -- would have us believe that the fundamental significance of any economic statistic derives solely from the extent to which it might be predictive either of Fed tightening or easing.

In no instance is such muddled thinking more evident than the current guessing game over why long-term rates are rising. One view gaining currency is that housing is bottoming, and that the sector’s presumably imminent recovery will make Fed easing less likely. This is absolute rubbish, of course, but it is the kind of thinking that will always hold sway in a Fed-obsessed financial world. If you want to understand the real reason why interest rates are going up, let me refer you to an article written by Peter D. Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. He has written incisively on this question in an essay that is very much against-the-grain. You can access it by clicking here,  as well as other articles by him at www.europac.net. At that last address you can order a copy of his soon-to-be-published book on the housing market, Crash Proof.

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Gold Advice in Real Time

In case you haven’t visited the Rick’s Picks chat room recently, we are using the forum to establish, through consensus, a short list of mining stocks that can be tracked, analyzed, recommended and position-traded in real time. If bullion is in the initial throes of a powerful and extended rally, as may well be the case, the list will help us get on board the very best stocks with relatively little risk and optimal timing. About 40 such stocks are being looked at, with the goal of winnowing down the list to about five. Check out Friday’s chatroom discussion if you’d like to see what we’ve come up with so far.

Join Me at GoldSeek.com

Let me also mention that I’ll be holding an open Q&A forum at GoldSeek.com next Thursday, the second such session in a continuing series.  During the first half of the planned hour-long session I will answer questions about stocks, indexes and commodities that you have e-mailed me in advance. You can do so by clicking here or by pointing your browser to the following URL: http://www.goldseek.com/chat.php. To actually enter the chat room for the real-time Q&A that will follow, you should pre-register by clicking here or by pointing your browser to this URL: http://www.goldseek.com/chat/.

Readers might also be interested to know that my daily essays on a wide variety of topics will continue to be available at GoldSeek and other sites frequented by traders and investors. With respect to one singularly important topic in particular – deflation – I aim to provide, as always, some of the most provocative and illuminating commentary you will find on the web.

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Seminars in Atlanta, Boca Raton

I’ve received numerous requests to offer Hidden Pivot seminars in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boca Raton, Florida. I will do so if there is sufficient demand, so please let me know if you would be seriously interested in attending in either place.  The two-day class would probably be held sometime in the spring of 2007. Contact me via e-mail, including your contact information and choice of locales. The cost would be $1,500 USD.