I have a doom-and-gloom inflation column is this week's issue of Fortune. Summary: We're All Screwed!

So how do we account for the discrepancy between the Federal Reserve's recent assurances that inflation is under control and the 91% of the population that's worried it isn't? There are several possibilities: The first is that we're all paranoid. We simply need reassurance from the authorities: Inflation rates are fine, nothing to see here, move along quietly. The second is that the Fed's insistence on focusing on "core" inflation - a measure that strips energy and food from the consumer price index (CPI) because they're theoretically subject to short-term volatility - makes inflation seem smaller than it is, or than we feel it to be when our gallon of milk that was 12% cheaper last year gets swiped across the grocery store scanner, beeping ominously like a tiny alarm bell. (While core inflation was just 2.3% in February, the CPI was 4%.) The third and most disconcerting possibility is that the CPI systemically understates inflation, in which case we're paying for it taxwise, and the government is underpaying Social Security recipients. In the words of many a UFO spotter, it isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you.

The Great Inflation Cover-up

As announced in the NY Post yesterday, I just signed on as a contributing writer at Fortune. Which, as Alex Pareene at Gawker notes, means I'm doing the same thing I was already doing, but with a different title. My contract calls for 10 columns and 2 features over the print mag over the next 12 months and Fortune is published twice a month, so on average I'll have something in every other issue.

However, the contract is exclusive for business writing, which means I can't write the back-page column for Fast Company anymore. This is unfortunate because I really enjoyed writing the column and my editors there, David Lidsky and Bob Safian, have been incredibly supportive. My last column will be in the June issue.

Lastly, I've never emailed my articles upon publication because it feels like spamming people, but a lot of people have requested that I do that, as they don't always check this site and want to know. So I'm going to do a monthly (or maybe quarterly) newsletter, for people who have indicated that they want that. But it's opt-in, so if you want to be on it, email me at spierslist AT gmail.

"As far as I can tell, there are only three constituencies outside the mining or commodities-trading industries who have historically demonstrated consistent enthusiasm for acquiring gold: street pavers in heaven, leprechauns, and survivalists." Thus begins my most recent Fortune column.

We did a series about where to put your money in a recession and I took the a look one of the more popular options for the truly paranoid: gold investments. Something must be in the air because I pitched it several weeks ago with the notion that I wanted to talk a bit about survivalists and why they love gold, and the next weekend I amused to see a piece in the New York Times about the popularity of survivalism--in the Styles section, no less. It's an interesting piece written by my talented former colleague, Alex Williams, and you can read it here.

Alex's piece notes that interest in survivalism is the highest it's been since the late 1970s. As it happens, gold is also the highest it's been (price-wise) since the late 1970s. From my column:

...for those who remember the late 1970s, survivalism wasn't the only thing going up at the time. If you have any interest in precious metals, you may recall that period as the last time gold went up precipitously, setting a record high of $850 an ounce in January 1980. The intersection of the two is not a coincidence.

Both were in part triggered by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and concerns about the economy. In 1979 inflation was high, energy prices were high, unemployment was high, and global political instability was an ongoing source of anxiety.

Now it's 2008. Inflation is on the rise (unless you're averting your eyes and focusing only on "core inflation," as the Fed would have you do), energy prices are high, unemployment is going up, and political instability is an ongoing source of anxiety. Concurrently, survivalism is enjoying a revival, and after a horrendous performance during most of the '80s and '90s (dropping to around $264 an ounce in 2000), gold has once again shot up, reaching a record high of $1,030.80 on March 17.

You can read the full article here.

Should You Rush to Gold? [Fortune]

My gracious host is making some server changes, so this site will be offline for about a week starting sometime this week and Monday at the latest. Not that it matters too much, given how infrequently I update, but just warning you so no one thinks I've been hacked or forgot to renew my domain name (both of which are totally plausible scenarios that have happened before).

We'll return to our regularly scheduled one-post-a-month shortly thereafter.