Peter Schiff appears on the Laura Ingraham show this morning.

One of the more interesting points he makes is evaluating the value of the Dow in light of ounces of gold. When Bush took office, the Dow was roughly 42 ounces of gold. Now it’s about 9. He expects that by the time Obama leaves office, it’s likely to be around one ounce of gold in value.

He compares the attempts to “fix” the economy to attempting to recreate the debt-based house of cards.

His advice is the same that it’s been for a while, which is refreshing considering that he’s taken some heat for it recently: gold, silver, foreign currency (he calls the dollar’s recent surge a false rally), and foreign stocks and bonds.

The WSJ hits the Bush/Obama bailout mentality hard in their editorial “Barack Obama-san.” Politics aside, it’s a sobering review of what has happened to the Japansese economy after real estate and stock market bubbles burst and the government responded with multiple bailouts.

Here’s the chart that compares Japansese and US government debt as percentages of their respective GDPs:

This is a troubling reminder. Not a road to go down, right?

But we’ve already gone down that road. And I’m not talking about AIG or TARP.

You see, this editorial focuses on government debt. But the total national debt that includes individuals and businesses has already bloated!

A recent Morgan Stanley presentation highlights the spike of total debt in the US (on slide 6). Since the turn of the century alone, it has spiked from roughly 250% to 300% of GDP!

The lesson to be learned is more than the ineffectivity of public stimulus, which the WSJ rightly highlights. It is that, regardless of the source or destination of largess, its tantilizing short term benefits are dwarfed by its subtle, long term poison.

Just like binge eating, the pounds remain after the pleasure, and make it that much harder to cut back in the future.

While commentators seem to try to hedge their bets by obfuscating, the Euro continues its surge relative to the dollar. It strikes me that this is a fundamental rebound. Then again, I’m a neophyte.

Here’s a DailyFX chart that illustrates the dramatic “V” rebound.

Have we seen the end of dollar-buying to liquidate positions in the US prior to the end of the year and prior to the Obama administration’s debut?

Also note that a significant portion of the surge in oil prices is actually tied to the exchange rate. This should begin to re-introduce inflationary pressures on the economy and counter the deflation — both real and predicted — of the past several months.

This may not be a final blow to the dollar, but it should serve as a wake-up-call that we should not expect deflation to win out in the long term, especially for imported or energy-sensitive commodities.

The question is: when will inflationary pressures of dollar printing and borrowing begin to outweigh the downward pressures introduced in real estate and retail from bankruptcies and liquidations? And what impact will negative real interest rates in the U.S. have on the dollar and the economy? Is there a window of opportunity in the next weeks or months for individuals to improve their positions before the storm actually hits in full force?

The dramatic recovery of the dollar versus the Euro — and indeed generally against the foreign currency basket — might finally be fading.

Not only has the Euro surged higher in the past few days, but DailyFX analysts claim to have called the floor at $1.26 USDEUR with a projection of $1.60.

The exchange rate bounced several times at the1.25 level over the past seven weeks. Now it appears to be making a sustained, dramatic rally. How to defend against it?

This already means dramatically higher oil and gold prices. It’s likely to further impact everything from trade to ability to raise debt and defend against foreign acquisitions.