Today, America's tables groan and its bellies gurgle. It is Thanksgiving - a day to gather together and count our blessings. This poses a challenge to many voters; they find they have more blessings than fingers.

While the rest of the nation takes the day off, here at The Daily Reckoning headquarters in London we continue our lonely vigil. Today, as every day, there are things to reckon with. But we, too, pause to reflect on the many things we have to be thankful for. We have not been drafted and sent to Iraq. We have not been rounded up and hustled off to a 'black site,' where imperial lackeys do dark things. We do not work for GM or Wal-Mart. We earn a decent living, for a writer, doing what we want to do. We are as healthy as a locust stump. We have a happy, healthy family. We have a credit card...with a line of credit that has never been exhausted. We have not had all our money stolen by government ...nor have we lost it in the investment markets. We are almost free (we pay taxes in the U.S., France, and Britain). We are almost white (of Irish extraction). And definitely over 21. What more could we ask for?

There must be a fixed sum of absurdity in the world. Let others count their blessings. Our job is to point out the preposterous...the calamitous...and the mendacious. In WWI it seemed as though all the world's absurdity was concentrated in a single disastrous event - a war so lame brained and ruinous it practically destroyed Western civilization. Later, absurdity took a new form - 'isms' that changed the map of the world. . National socialism in Germany brought another war. Communism in Russia brought seven decades of misery. Colonialism became a bad thing and was replaced by nationalism, which turned Africa into a murderous dump. There were other isms too - in art...in philosophy...and in politics. Almost all were sordid or mad.

But no one cares much about isms anymore. Che has become a T-shirt symbol; young people think he played the guitar in Elvis Presley's band.

But if there is a fixed sum of absurdity in the world...where has it gone?

There is a 'glut of savings,' says Fed chief-dauphin Ben Bernanke. 'We think, they sweat,' say the economist impersonators. 'Prices are not rising,' say the Pinocchios over at the Labor Department.

We note that the world's richest people now depend on the savings of the world's poorest. Is that not absurd, dear reader? We note also, that the world's greatest military power throws its weight around all over the world - making the world 'freer' and more democratic, we are told - and expects the still-Red Chinese to finance it. Is that not mad, dear reader?

"It's unbelievable," said Kurt Richebacher last night. We dined with Dr. Richebacher, who made one of his rare trips to London.

"I'll tell you what is really crazy," he began. "Everybody says that the U.S. economy is the most flexible in the world. They must be dreaming. The U.S. economy is completely inflexible. It suffers from huge problems that are obvious to any serious economy, mainly the lack of savings and the current account deficit. But the economy is so inflexible; it can't do anything about them. And, even worse, no one can even talk about them. Well, I shouldn't say no one. There are a few of us. But we are outsiders. We are marginal. The people on the inside do not even seem to recognize that there is a problem.

"In the last five years, the US economy has lost 3million out of 17 million manufacturing jobs. This is almost the definition of an economy in decline. It is an economy, as Hayek would say, that is shrinking. Of course, the people who call themselves economists in America - with the exception of Stephen Roach - say that the trade with China is symbiotic. The Chinese send the Americans goods; the Americans send the Chinese bonds. No serious economist would say that this is a healthy situation.

"What they did was to stimulate the economy more than any government had ever done. The tax cuts were worth about $860 billion. And the low interest rates brought $3 trillion of new credit into the system. But even all that didn't create a boom. Take out all the lies and measurement nonsense and you see an economy that has never recovered. Talk about jobs? America has 1.2 million real estate agents. It's all a housing boom...caused by the credit expansion.

"And you know why profits are up in the United States? It has nothing to do with healthy, growing businesses. Just the opposite. These businesses have stopped investing in new plant and equipment. So they have much less capital equipment to depreciate. As depreciation collapses, profitability goes up - especially when they're making money from financing activities. But this can't last.

"It's unbelievable. I grew up in a time when you wanted to save so that your children would have a better life than you had. Now, in all the Anglo-Saxon economies, people don't seem to want to help the next generation, they want to cheat it, by leaving a legacy of worn-out capital...and debt.

"I tell you the whole thing is a monumental fraud. And Mr. Alan Greenspan is merely an extraordinary criminal. Here is something for Americans to think about as they celebrate their Thanksgiving Day. Why is it that we Europeans have a higher standard of living than they do? Yes, it's true. My son works in America. He barely gets any time off. He has hardly any vacation to come to visit me. In Europe, we get at least 6 weeks, sometimes much more. And people don't have so much debt. Property prices have risen in France, for example. But they rise on savings, not debt. And everybody is always saying what a mess the German economy is in. But when I look at it carefully, I see that it is solid. And growing. It has a positive balance of trade. And the Germans' saving rate is going up - above 10%.

"I like the European model much better."

*** The big financial story is the rise of gold. The ever-more-precious metal is almost twice the price it was when we recommended it 6 years ago. That is not a spectacular profit, but it is a solid one. Readers would have done better to buy Google when it came out at 85...or buy Miami apartments, flipping them every year.

But both Google and property are speculations (unless you intend to have and to hold the property). Both could go down as well as up. (At this point, we would guess the most likely direction is down.) Gold, on the other hand, is not a gamble. It is insurance against other people's gambles. The Anglo-Saxon economies are leveraged on debt. The Chinese economy is dangerously dependent on demand that really doesn't exist. The entire world carries more than 200 Trillion in derivatives...that no one quite knows what to make of. Gold may not go up. It may not go down. But it won't go away.

*** The Dow seems headed to 11,000. Gold seems headed to $500. Which trend do you think will last? In the short run, both are likely to correct. Gold must be nearing a pull-back. Stocks too. But we will use the correction as an opportunity to buy only one of these investments. You can guess which.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.