The Federal Reserve panicked last week when it cut the discount rate and the Fed Funds target rate by half a point to 1%. In addition, the money supply is roaring ahead at unprecedented rates. The adjusted monetary base -- the Fed’s own checking account -- has soared 41% in a month!

You could not tell from the crowds that the stock market has fallen 44% this year, once of the worst performances on record. Unemployment is rising, and the recession is here. Jim Dines calls it the "invisible" crash. You won’t see bread lines like you saw during the Great Depression.

Massive government intervention, both here and abroad, has given hope to the markets for the first time in months. Stocks and bonds rallied, and gold tanked to $800 an ounce. Oil is down to under $80 a barrel, and gasoline is selling for under $3 in some parts of the country.

I was on CNBC Kudlow & Co. on Friday night talking about the "worst week ever for stocks." The sell-off was a record, the worst week in the last 100 years.

Cash and gold are the only safe havens in today’s turbulent crisis. Given that the market is down nearly 6% today, I will repeat what I said on last week’s hotline: "Now is the time to build a strong position in cash and gold, the only two investments that are weathering this storm."

Today the Down fell 777 points, and the S&P 500 Index fell 7%, due to the failure of Congress to pass the proposed $700 billion bailout package. But in all honesty, I seriously doubt that this massive intervention by the federal government would solve any of our long-term problems, and could make things worse. So I am still hopeful that Congress will do the right thing, and not put the financial markets and the economy in a straight-jacket.

Historically, September is the cruelest month, and this is no exception. We are living through what Jim Dines calls "the invisible crash" where most of our stocks, funds and income plays are being weighed down by lower prices and higher inflation, and the uncertainty of the $700 billion bailout plan proposed by the Bush administration.

I just returned from a week in Tokyo, Japan, for meetings with the Mont Pelerin Society, an invitation-only meeting of social scientists and economists from around the world, including Nobel Prize winners and top government officials.

After last week’s stock market performance, you might feel like selling out and going fishing. But Alex Green offers something better.

Despite a series of hurricanes hitting or headed toward the United States, oil prices fell again today to below $110 a barrel, and gold fell under $800 an ounce again. Gold is the best indicator of future inflation, and it now appears that price inflation will be coming down, and that’s the biggest bullish factor for stocks right now, at least in the short run.

The USA athletes, the only athletes from a major country not publicly funded, performed extremely well in the 2008 Olympics, by winning the total medal count with 110, versus 100 by the Chinese.

"Time for a rebound in China" is the Motley Fool headline today as we enter the final week of the Olympics in Beijing.

I just returned from California where I attended the San Francisco Money Show. Doom and gloom was prevalent, despite last week’s rally on Wall Street.

I’m headed for San Diego this week for my youngest daughter’s wedding on Friday, 08-08-08. While out there, I will be giving a lecture at Bay Books in Coronado on my new book "EconoPower: How a New Generation of Economists is Transforming the World." That’s Wednesday, Aug. 6, at 7 p.m. I hope to see some of you there.

On Tuesday, I was on CNBC’s Kudlow & Co. again and Larry asked each of the panelists if this was a "bear market rally"? I said it was. We are in the midst of an inflationary recession -- the two biggest threats to a bull market -- and now it appears that Europe is slowing down.

Unfortunately, the giant discount broker delivered a rough second-quarter report. Net revenue fell by a sharp 20% to $532 million. The company posted a wider-than-expected deficit of $0.19 a share, a major shift from the $0.37 a share it earned a year earlier.

It's good to be back after a well-deserved vacation following my big show, FreedomFest. (In the next day or two, we will post a report on FreedomFest and a recording of our FreedomFest anthem, "Freedom and Gold," which was sung with great gusto at the Saturday night banquet.

I am still here in Las Vegas after three glorious days of "great ideas, great books, and great thinkers" at FreedomFest. It was the best FreedomFest ever, with more than 1,400 attendees, and it was great seeing so many of you at my big show.

It is times like these that try investor’s souls, but if you are a risk taker, panic selling like we are witnessing is a great buying opportunity. As Rothschild said, "Buy when blood is running in the streets."

As we enter the final day of June, we end a very tough week and a very rough month. In fact, according to a financial historian friend of mine, this is the worst June we have had since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with the Dow down more than 10%.