CNN: Gold Doesn't Exist. Stocks Are Your Only Choice.

That's what the folks who fund CNN have come up with as a poll to measure your investment intentions.

Sticking with stocks is dumb. As for CDs, a "jumbo" with $100k in it will yield you about 6% interest. The real rate of inflation is something like 11% at this point, depending on whom you ask and how much that person is paid to reassure you that everything's fine. The mattress, of course, yields 0%. So CNN is saying, essentially, "please stand still so we can hit you again."

The better idea is to buy gold, silver, or a nice acre of arable dirt near a water source. Anything but paper, unless you're building a library -- in which case it's nice to have something where the text doesn't suddenly disappear when the electricity fails. Reading books by lamplight strains the eyes, so in a place without electricity you'd have to wait for the dawn and then pack it in at dusk. Staring at a dead blank screen, on the contrary, can be done at any hour of the day or night. Like losing money to racketeers.