First, in honor of Veterans Day let's give a big gold star to those who have served their country.

Second, due to the partial holiday, this was a slow day in the markets, which nonetheless saw gold slide about half a percent while silver fell about 0.63%.

We will hear more in the upcoming weeks about quantitative easing (QE3) and its effects, good and bad, upon the American economy. We are feeling more strongly than ever that the Fed has been backed into a corner by the lack of fiscal policy. What's worse, the Congress and administration are prey to a lack of what George Herbert Bush once called "the vision thing."

What is the vision thing exactly, you might ask, and how does it affect gold and silver prices?

The greatest eras in American history have seen the country undertake grand tasks and, for the most part, achieving them. The building of the railroads and the public university system following the Civil War, for instance. The building of telecommunications and electricity infrastructure from about 1910 through the 1940s. The Interstate Highway System in the 1950s, the space program of the '60s. 

No vision, no big new ideas, no spin offs, no hope and enthusiasm.

From about 1975 onward, the country has seen lower wages for the largest part of american society - low and medium skilled workers. Worse, perhaps, even professional white collar jobs are being squeezed in terms of earnings. Doctors and accountants make less in real terms, lawyers make more. On average of course. We think this is a direct outgrowth of poor income distribution. More money in more people's hands means a broader, deeper prosperity.

People need houses and cars and washing machines and computers. It used to be that more money was earned so more money could be put toward down-payments on those things. Now, 5% can be put down on a house. Zero percent on a car, and so forth. This means more borrowing with an ever-shrinking wage level. More credit is demanded instead of a higher wage that allows an individual to put down more money in the first place on a product so he or she may finance less of the purchase price.

Credit markets get stretched thin and then shred. The lender of last resort steps in. In this case, the Fed. They pump trillions into the credit market, hoping to expand people's access to money. Instead, banks, financial institutions and only the most credit-worthy companies can borrow. This slows the economy's rebound. 

Of course, this is "socialism" - really social engineering - but only for the big players. 

This has wrought bizarre imbalances in the equities markets, currency and, as we all know, in the precious metals markets. If large corporations can continue to borrow essentially unlimited amounts of capital at virtually no cost or at costs just at the inflation rate, they can invest in new technologies that automate just about anything. It is self-evident that this has not produced a correlated rise in jobs. In fact, this condition is helping to keep job growth down.

If an investor can make 20 to 25% in equities, why would that investor put his/her money elsewhere? 

Meanwhile, the average American is getting whipsawed. That person is being paid less and at the same time is having to pay more to finance his or her needs. 

We have seen a tech bubble, a bond bubble, another tech bubble and the most recent one, a housing bubble, in the last 25 years give or take. Are we ready for a stock bubble? Who will get hurt the most when the tapering finally begins?

The common person cannot even reasonably put money in a plain old savings account because the banks pay bupkis on those sorts of holdings. 

Gold would seem to be the natural repository for cash protection. Yet, with money constantly sniffing at the equities fire hydrant, gold has flattened once again.

What the federal government needs are ideas - the vision thing. And it has to run much more efficiently. The right has to stop thinking that every single thing government undertakes is doomed, while the left has to stop seeing government as a universal panacea.

Projects like the space program have yielded millions of well-paying jobs, and hundreds of billions of dollars in spin-off technologies. Coming up with a new vision isn't government interference. The country has tens of thousands of bridges that need rebuilding. Perhaps there is a technological breakthrough that can speed the problem? Like 3D printing on a massive scale. High speed internet delivery so we won't fall out of the top ten in speeds achieved. An electric smart grid. Or a real rail and road vision, not one that can be pecked to death by ducks.

We need better jobs and more jobs and less need for credit. All that would be very good for gold.