The US Dept of Labor reported this week that consumer prices spiked to a multiyear high. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) hit 5.6 percent for the month of July. And the headline number, which includes food and fuel costs, is in fact the focus of many dramatic, eye-grabbing article titles in the print and electronic media.

The week ended up with a lot of folks all smiles-and-happy faces as they headed out to kick off one of the remaining summer weekends. Oil’s down, the dollar’s up, and the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrials are getting a respite from the downturn plaguing market optimists.

Why is it that we can’t seem to allow another country to be successful without demonizing it? Next week marks the beginning of the Summer Olympics in and about Beijing. Although many of us might not care about the competitive sports, we do seem to have an insatiable appetite for news and commentary that takes pot-shots at the Chinese.

The thought may have occurred to you last week that all is well again, the bears are back in their cages and the bulls are running free, not through the streets of Pamplona but those of Lower Manhattan.

Lots of folks--including Randy Newman--have a problem with short people. And Wall Street and Capitol Hill apparently want to do something to rid us of the pain of dealing with them.

The way to avoid getting mauled, slashed and slaughtered by a bear market is to abide by my No. 1 rule of investing: Make sure the foundation of your portfolio is rooted in investments you can count on to send regular checks.

Is anyone who lived through and remembers the 1970s working at the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury Dept? How about the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors? You wouldn’t think so the way the feds are clowning around amid the current economic and financial mess.

With the leading indexes of the US stock market heading to one of the worst Junes since The Great Depression, it’s getting harder to bird-dog for stocks that won’t just come apart but will actually do something for us.

I don’t take my job of picking stocks, bonds and funds lightly. But to hear some of my subscribers tell it, you’d think sometimes I’d grabbed some darts and tossed them at the stock tables in the papers.

Banks aren’t fixed. And for anybody who’s excited about backing up the truck in the hopes of cashing in on a recovery and rebound in regional and local banks in the US, I hope you have a lot of extra cash in your portfolio. It doesn’t look good, and the troubles are far from fully revealed to the public, let alone addressed and fixed.