Chastity is not a particularly useful virtue if you are a prostitute...nor charity if you are an IRS agent. There is a time and place for virtue, as well as all other things.

The Daily Reckoning is a millennial project...in the sense that it began at the dewy dawn of the 21st century - in July 1999.

But though it began fairly recently, it had behind it nearly 30 years of watching the financial markets, the economy, and human nature. Of course, whether we drew the right conclusions from all those years of observation is open to question...if not derision.

We pause briefly merely to look back at those last seven or eight years.

One thing we were very right about was the Tech Bubble of the late '90s. We said it would pop. And so it came to pass that in the first year of the great 3rd millennium AD, the NASDAQ crashed and has not recovered.

Predicting the end of the Tech Bubble was child's play. So many bells were ringing; we practically went deaf...and went dumb shouting over them. Valuations were absurd. Companies with no earnings were suddenly worth millions. It was a 'new era,' we were told. And if we dissented, we were dismissed: "You just don't get it, do you?" one annoyed dear reader wrote to us.

We were also very right about gold. It was trading for less than $300 when we began pushing it. Nor did we ever hide the fact that we had favored gold for the previous 20 years. But there is nothing like a two-decade bear market in your favorite metal to give a man a sense of humility.

Long-suffering readers know that humility is our only real virtue...and even as to that, we are insincere. Humility resulted from our being profoundly wrong for an embarrassingly long time. Year after year, our stock of gold lost value...but our stock of humility grew.

Soon our humility was floating with tech stock valuations...until it, too, had reached a bubble stage. We were so humble in the year 2000...we were shamelessly arrogant about it. Of course, humility gives us an edge...and an advantage; well, okay...it damned well makes us superior! So here you are, dear reader...a full and complete confession.

After having been wrong about gold for 20 years, we figured it was time we were right for a while. Gold cooperated beautifully. We expect it to cooperate for another five or ten years - at least. But not everything has gone so well. We were convinced that the whole economy was going to Hell in a handcart...we could never quite understand why it hadn't gotten there yet.

Humility and modesty were useful to us in the face of the tech bubble...they helped us to be suspicious of the 'new era' claims of the period. But they were as useless as an umbrella in the desert in the years that followed. We held it up while the sun shone. The housing bubble, the dollar rebound, and the apparently robust economy of the 2002-2006 period - all of them required a willing suspension of disbelief...the kind of wanton disregard for virtue of any form that you get in a drunken stupor or a bubble market.

Housing was the way to get rich...but we were loath to mention it. The dollar was the currency to be in; but we were afraid to hold it. The economy spun like a top; but we kept expecting it to spin out of control.

We would have been better off - looking at it in purely financial terms - if we'd tossed off our humble virtues like a bikini top at St. Tropez. We should have flipped some condos in Miami (just so long as we didn't forget to sell!). We should have bought the Dow at the bottom in 2002. We should have squeezed a little profit from the dollar too - selling off our euro positions in January of '05 when the euro was quoted at $1.35

And here we are...the leaves are piling up in the park...the days are getting shorter...another days of another year are dwindling down to a precious few. What virtues will pay off in the months ahead?

We have a hunch. And here, since we are in a confessional mood, we have to admit that it is a hunch we have had for a long time without result...waiting for a real financial collapse that seems to have missed its plane. Nevertheless we have a hunch that the time for recklessness is over. We have a hunch that thrift will pay off in the years ahead. And timidity. Even fear.

Gold sold for $604 on Friday. At that price, it is only $4 over our target price. We have a hunch that dear readers will not resent or regret that $4...if they were to buy now. Nor will they regret selling the Dow...offloading speculative condos...or lightening up on the dollar.