The upside is I'm now sitting in a new ergonomically designed high-backed leather chair. What a difference!

Today I'm going to finish the Bernanke paper, spend some time on a study of gold stocks, and have talks with not one but two book publishers who on Friday inquired as to my interest in writing a book.

Regarding Bernanke, the point I'm going to make is that in my view the Fed is focusing the public on the wrong issue. Central bankers want to appear as inflation fighters when they should be working with finance ministers for sustainable economic growth.

I believe that the Consumer Price Index will top out this summer. CPI lags the Producer Price Index because producers pass costs along to the consumer after their products have been distributed to the public.

PPI is on the decline. Core PPI peaked in July 2005 and Total PPI (including food and energy) peaked in September 2005. Smoothing the data, the charts reflect that PPI is steadily declining.

On Tuesday June 13 (tomorrow), the PPI data for May will be released at 8:30am.

The next day (June 14) at 8:30am, the CPI data will be released.

I think the odds are that by the time the equity market opens tomorrow, some of us at least will be wondering why the Fed has to be such a hawk on inflation.

With respect to gold and silver stocks, I believe that the price trend of metals futures markets may continue to be volatile for reasons that are related to short-term uncertainty over the Fed's actions. Presently traders are thinking along the lines that perception is reality, and they have been selling the metals down from previously over-bought levels.

In the not-too-distant future, however, there will be creeping doubts that Bernanke can overlook the shakiness of the global economy. As an example I will point readers to the share trading in Toyota Motor (NYSE: TM), which is the new global auto manufacturing powerhouse, and which continues to break sales records. Toyota shares have lost almost -20 pct from May 4, roughly US$40 billion.

So, in the past five weeks, Toyota has lost in market cap the equivalent of the total market value of both General Motors and Ford plus probably the Chrysler component of Daimler-Chrysler. Traders are more thinking economic problems lie ahead than they are that producers will have pricing power.

Back to my outlook for the metals, I think a reasonable scenario will be to see a divergence between the industrial metals like the steels, copper, nickel, zinc, etc, from precious metals like gold and silver.

So far that has not happened, but I expect to see it this summer. In fact two of the largest financial services companies in the world, Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, have these past few days put out opinions that gold is going higher from here. Compared to the owners of the Fed (JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, etc), the opinions are strikingly different.

I am left wondering about why the trading patterns for the stocks of the foreign banks are breaking down before the U.S.-headquartered Money Center Banks. I'm wondering if there is a link to the Fed's hawkish stance here, which I think is only a temporary one.

But, frankly, today my mind is mostly on whether I want to become a writer of books. The opportunities are there.

As I look directly ahead to the calm blue water of Lake Ontario, there is a flotilla of boats headed to Mississauga, maybe 15 miles west of downtown Toronto, where a boaters landmark " the ‘Four Sisters' coal-fired generating plant, is being demolished today. This is part of the program to reduce pollutants near the big cities.

Alternative energy solutions like wind power are definitely on the upswing here. I even see it out on the water in the form of sailboats. :-)