Much of the recent drop in oil prices is due to the rally in financials, says Byron King. But the black goo is still double the price it was two years ago. Worse still, the US is now coping with chronic inflation. Precious metals are the best way to your savings and purchasing power…

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a House of Representatives panel on Wednesday his top priority is restoring U.S. financial calm even as weak growth and inflation threaten the economy, in prepared comments mirroring ones he made a day earlier to a Senate committee.

We all know the catch-22 situation facing the Federal Reserve… stagflation . A stagnant economy coupled with rocketing inflation. At the rate oil is increasing, we can expect our daily products to double in prices within the next 2-3 years.

Bill Bonner in The Daily Reckoning takes on the Fed’s big dilemma. How can the it simultaneously fight inflation and deflation of asset prices?

Late payments on home-equity loans are at a record high, and delinquency rates on loans for cars, small businesses and construction are at levels not seen in a decade or more — all bad news for lenders, regardless of their subprime exposure.

Alexei Miller, chief executive officer of Russian-based OAO Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural-gas company, has said that crude oil prices will reach $250 a barrel in the “foreseeable future.”

Increasingly in recent weeks commentators have begun speculating about the dreaded “S-word”- stagflation- and whether or not such a protracted period featuring both high prices and high unemployment would blight the U.S. economy.

Oil prices have resumed their northward climb. And inflation has returned to the American lexicon for the first time in decades. For U.S. consumers, there’s no way to dodge the financial fallout of that economic one-two punch.