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By Adrian Ash

If WallStreet stock can surge 200 points on falling earnings, an 11% drop in housing starts, and a 16 year record for consumer price inflation just as the Dow Jones Industrial Average did on Wednesday this week then so can everything else.

Everything else that doesn't carry a picture of George Washington, that is.

Crude oil, rice, Gold, the Euro, wheat, emerging market bonds, copper...anything that's not stamped with the Dollar's all seeing eye looks a great bet once again. The Federal Reserve has seen to that, driving the real returns paid to cash down towards a three decade low.

Sinking to minus 2.05% in March, the real rate of interest nearly equals the very worst returns to cash paid during the Great Greenspan Reflation of 2002 2005. This latest slump in real interest rates also comes thanks to emergency rate cuts, too.

Plus, of course, the worst run for Consumer Price rises since the start of 1992. And here at BullionVault we think the two are more closely related than the Olsen twins.

Rates down, inflation up? Well, what else did savers and retirees expect...?

The Fed can't promise to forestall recession forever. But by God it will try!

So for the meantime, at least, there's truly no fear of deflation either inside or out of the United States.

Whatever happened to the Fed Committee's much expected moderation of inflation? Running at 4.3% yet again in March, the CPI just put in its longest stretch above 4.0% in 16 years.

And where's the projected leveling out of energy and other commodity prices it promised only last month? Crude oil just broke fresh records above $115 per barrel and rice prices worldwide have doubled from where they stood in October.