Is there a Gold "bubble" and will it burst soon? I just sat through

[theophilus]

an episode of Glen Beck. (I know, I know. It was scary and everyone should force themselves to audit this dangerous man's rantings, imo.) Anyway, most of his advertisers seem to sell gold. Beck is fear mongering on the collapse of our nation. Seems like a good partnership. I also see that the dollar is strengthening and yet gold is staying high or going higher. Are conservatives fueling this gold binge and are they about to get bitten in their collective arses? Those in the know here at DU: please check in and comment on the concept of a "gold bubble". Please. Thank you.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Stephanie Miller and Thom Hartman also do commercials for gold.

[theophilus]

2. Yes? Any thoughts on a bubble? n/t

[Gidney N Cloyd]

12. Nah. I'm just saying it doesn't seem to be a conservative plot.

[Mika]

5. And Thom regularly says "the dollar is doomed".

Big dif is that Thom gives a thousand reasonable reasons as to why it might be.

---

[slackmaster]

3. It costs less than $500 per ounce to mine and purify gold

Think about it.

[AllentownJake]

7. LOL

At that logic gas shoule be at 30 cents.

[slackmaster]

13. I sold my gold holdings at just over $1,000 in 2008 for a substantial gain

I don't plan to buy any until it's back down to about $650.

[AllentownJake]

15. You will be waiting a long time

The dollar is strengthening right now on Euro weakness. However, Euro fears have increased demand.

Whether we like it or not our currency is going to take another hit after the Euro and Pound take their beating.

[slackmaster]

20. I don't care at all

Investing in gold is something I do only when I think it is at a low.

Lately I've been investing in collectible firearms. I believe they will appreciate substantially.

[AllentownJake]

22. I'm investing in a garden

and I keep a couple cases of cheap liquor lying around. In a civil unrest, liquor will be a very easy to trade commodity.

[harun]

51. Tomatoes taste better than gold.

[MattBaggins]

54. I'm going to fill plastic drums in my basement with salt.

Better then gold when Armageddon comes.

[cliffordu]

100. ...And toilet paper will be golden.

[Art_from_Ark]

96. And if you had waited a year and a half or so,

you could have sold them for 20% more.

[Scruffy1]

62. The gold business sucks

The biggest problem with gold trading is that its unregulated and the commission is 10% both ways. So you have to get a twenty percent increase to break even. The end users of gold are electronics manufacturers and jewelers, whose demand is fairly inflexible. Another factor is that there is no shortage of gold ever, since if the price rises lower yield mining operations become profitable. For instance if it cost you $600.00 per ounce to produce gold and the price is $600.00 there is no reason to do it. But as the price rises production ramps up and true to Marx always leads to overproduction. The same is true of nearly all commodities, but it is impossible to predict when the bubble will burst.

[Art_from_Ark]

67. Gold production worldwide has been fairly constant the last few years

Gold is not like a lot of other commodities, in that it is a finite resource. You can't plant it, you can't manufacture it, and you can't just dig a hole in the ground and start a gold mine. It takes a huge investment merely to prospect for gold, and most of the deposits that are found are not economically extractable at any price. Even if an economically feasible deposit is found, there will still be several years of feasibility studies, lab studies, negotiations, etc., and even after all that, some potentially extractable deposits never make it to the production stage.

[Art_from_Ark]

78. And just where did you pull that figure out of?

Do you have any idea how much it costs just to explore for gold, both in money and in time? Also, all gold deposits are not alike. Some are in difficult-to-reach areas, some are in high-cost areas, some are in politically unstable areas, some have very low-grade ore. In many places, it costs a lot more than that just to get started, and several years just to get back the initial investment, assuming that the deposit even reaches the production stage.

[slackmaster]

89. There's information about it scattered around on the Web, if you'd bother to look

Obviously as the price goes up, lower-grade deposits become economically viable (which increases supply).

If you think $1,200 is a reasonable price to pay for gold, go ahead and buy all you want.

[Art_from_Ark]

91. Sure there's lots of "information" on the web

That's the standard response one gives when one does not actually have hard figures and just wants to pretend to be knowledgeable about the topic at hand.

I am involved with the metals markets, and with mining exploration and consulting companies. I have also been a serious coin collector for most of the past 40 years. Don't try to bullshit me.

[pscot]

4. The 13% fall in the Euro

had something to do with the latest gold rally.

[AllentownJake]

6. Doubtful

Gold is a hedge for currencies that are being devalued.

Take a look at the defict in Europe and the United States.

There maybe a paper gold or more accurately electronic gold crash, as their is substantial doubt about whether the physical inventory exist to back-up the accounts, but I doubt physical gold will be cheaper.

;-)

[theophilus]

8. Interesting. Thanks. n/t

[DJ13]

9. My advice

If everyone tells you something is a sure bet, its a lousy investment.

[AllentownJake]

10. Gold is a hedge

It isn't an investment.

[DJ13]

16. Gold has also collapsed in the past even though it remained a hedge

If things get so bad you need gold as a hedge will your local businesses accept it as currency?

If things get that bad no hedge will be worth anything.

[AllentownJake]

18. The ultimate hedge is a gun, canned goods, bullets and liquor

If the unrest is long term, livestock and seeds.

People betting on gold are betting on a devaluation of the currency, not a total collapse of the government.

Silver is a better hedge for that. It has more uses post-apocalypse.

[DJ13]

21. Agreed, lock and loaded!

Though I cant shoot straight if Im too loaded.

:)

[AllentownJake]

23. Liquor is the easiest thing to trade

in a society where currency has suddenly become a problem. People will always want to get drunk.

[elehhhhna]

80. I'll make moonshine if it all collapses.

No end to the number of drunks out there -- I'll be rich, I tells ya!

[TampaAnimus2010]

38. Heres a chart for ya...

This is the stock market rally in terms of gold.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$SPX:$GOLD&p=W&b=5&g=0&id=p29219631692

[AllentownJake]

44. The S&P is down 9% in terms of gold

Well aware. The chart link leads to nowhere.

Stocks are a bad investment. You can make money trading them.

[TampaAnimus2010]

49. Thats odd... try this link

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$SPX:$GOLD&p=W&b=5&g=0&id=p29219631692

There we go. Thats better. Not sure why the forum ripped up
the link.

[Electric Monk]

11. Buy low, sell high, as the saying goes

People telling you that now is a good time to buy probably have some to sell.

my 2¢

[orwell]

14. It's a trade like any other trade...

...anyone who tells you any different is trying to talk up the price.

Has it reached a top? Who knows. But I've never bought the commodity backed currency argument. After Der Nix took us off the gold standard, the entire "gold as money" claim quickly became useless. It will take people generations to understand this. (It took me the better part of 20 years.)

And by the way, Glenn Beck is a world class asswipe who is making a bunch of money off of morons.

You can take that to the bank...

[AllentownJake]

17. Gold sellers advertise on any show

Where the audience has a general distrust of the US government. Which means they advertise on liberal radio shows as well.

If Bush were in office, they'd buy time on Olbermann.

[Art_from_Ark]

60. After Tricky Dick took us off the gold standard

the "gold as money" claim became strengthened.
When Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the official US price of gold was $42/ounce. A year later, it had risen to $100/ounce. Today, it is $1200/ounce. And today, those 42 paper dollars would have the purchasing power of less than $8 in 1971 money.

[orwell]

76. I can't predict the power of morons...

...like I said, it is a trade.

Will we be treating gold as money 300 years from now?

By your logic, wouldn't oil have been a better hedge? It was $3.60 a barrel in 1971. It hit $136 per barrel in 2008. That means gold lagged oil in price appreciation. That's because oil can actually do something.

How about the stock market. The S&P 500 bottomed at 61 in 1974. It hit a top of 1575 in 2007. That's almost 26 times price appreciation in less time. And that is not including dividends which would make the S&P far outperform gold.

Housing in the Bay Area outperformed gold...and you got to live in the house.

All of these things appreciated more because they do more than gold.

If you are going to invest as an inflation hedge, invest in something that does something other than adorn rich people's bodies or feed paranoid delusions about Armageddon.

The gold as money argument is dead. It's just going to take hundreds of years for people to truly understand it.

What matters is energy, pure and simple. Everything else flows from that.

[Art_from_Ark]

77. So where are you going to store your oil?

Build a giant storage tank in your back yard?
Or invest in an oil company, like, say, BP?

Sure, housing in the Bay Area might have outperformed gold for a certain period of time, but if you had invested in a house in Detroit, where would your investment be now? Or Buffalo? Youngstown? Allentown? Gary? Flint?

What about the Dow for 1968? It ranged between 850 and 970, at a time when gold was $35 an ounce. And how many stocks in the Dow have fallen by the wayside since then? Hell, how many Dow stocks have fallen from grace in just the past 10 years?

Since gold has been considered a monetary medium since money was invented, the "gold as money" argument is most assuredly not dead.

[Bold Lib]

19. Soros says that there will be a bubble burst on gold. BUT, he is still buying it himself.

http://www.myloansconsolidated.com/2010/02/24/george-soros-the-ultimate-bubble-is-gold-and-still-buys-gold/

[Hekate]

26. Soros, however, has enough money to burn in big piles, and can afford to gamble. nt

[theophilus]

31. Fascinating. Sounds like Soros might be a "Gold Member", iykwim. n/t

[Taitertots]

36. Soros bought into the stock market bubble, and the housing bubble

Ride it on the way up, short it on the way down.

[Hekate]

24. Don't buy gold unless it's in jewelry. Otherwise it's a waste of money. At the moment...

... if you buy gold you will buy high (extremely high) and sell low, because while it will go up for awhile after this, it will inevitably go down, and you will be very sad. Right now it is so ludicrously expensive that Macy's has started selling diamond jewelry set in silver, which boggles the mind.

Don't sell your gold jewelry and grandpa's watch to gold buyers you see on tv, either. They pay pennies on the dollar.

My ex-husband went to work for a gold-seller right after our divorce in 1980, and bought his own product (as it were). It went down. And the outfit was so shady that I got a phone call from the FBI inquiring as to what I knew -- I said I knew nothing at all, because in fact I knew very little and my ex had enough trouble.

Look, we've been here before. In the 1970s we thought the economy would collapse and some of us started checking out which of our friends might have useful talents to barter. I still have my Small Farm Animals handbook, which made for interesting reading even if I didn't go back to the land. Some invested in silver coins and bars of silver, thinking they would be of more value than the debased currency we actually use daily.

Here's what I think I learned: you can't eat gold or silver, and if the world is in that much trouble, metal won't be worth much either. Do you think the airlines will accept a bar of silver or gold in payment for a ticket to somewhere else? (I actually gave that some consideration, because in the 1970s I was living on an ecologically fragile island.) No, and by now nearly everything is electronic, and when that goes kablooie -- but I digress.

To get away from personal anecdotes and answer your actual question: Beck is a lunatic serving his corporate masters to get a hefty paycheck. They pay him by electronic transfer, not with gold. Someone is making a killing off this gold bubble, but it isn't you and me.

Hekate

[theophilus]

29. Thanks for your thoughts on this subject. I agree that we "can't eat gold or silver".

In a Mad Max type of scenario like Beck is describing I think those with gold would soon be deprived of it, one way or another. Skills for survival would be more highly valued. imo.

[Statistical]

37. Gold would be useful in a scenario like that however I think it would be low on scale of importance.

If you really think the end of world is coming
1) Get yourself some land with well, running creek, some orchards, and area to plant fields
2) Get yourself about a multi-year supply of food protected from elements
3) Get yourself enough people with weapons (and skills) to defend it
4) Get yourself some seed, animal powered farm equipment, and the skills to use it
5) Get yourself sufficient livestock for meat, dairy, and animal power
6) Get yourself a good stockpile of stuff that will become scarce and hard to produce (medicine, bandages, idodine, sharp knives, tools, repair supplies, alchohol, ammo and/or reloading supplies)
7) Get youself some gold (will be useful medium for trading if you are prosperous but are missing some key component).

You are right though the people living in their suburban death traps with no access to food, crops, clean water and have a safe full of gold won't last very long.

[AllentownJake]

30. Like I always say

A gun is the surest hedge.

[orwell]

34. Spot on...n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

73. You've got that bass ackwards

Gold jewelry is a poor investment. When you buy new gold jewelry, you are mostly paying for the craftsmanship, which usually goes to zero the minute you buy the piece. What's more, the fineness (proportion of gold to alloy metals) of gold jewelry is usually pretty low, almost never above 75% (18K) and usually only about 58% (14K) or less. So that means that much of the weight of the jewelry is not gold. If you sell it to a dealer, it only goes for scrap, unless it is some custom piece made by a famous designer. With bullion (government coins, or bars made by an internationally recognized refiner), however, you get a piece of gold that has a value that can be easily verified on the world market.

[Hekate]

75. LOL. I do not buy jewelry for an investment. I buy it because it is beautiful and then I wear it.

It seems sad to me to hide the beauty of gold and precious stones away in vaults on spec that they will go up in monetary value. Aphrodite would not approve.

Hekate

[Art_from_Ark]

79. Well, gold in other forms is not necessarily "just a waste of money"

For example, I have found old US gold coins here in Japan that sell for little more than their gold content, but back in the States they will fetch more, sometimes much more, because of the demand from American collectors. Being a collector at heart, I haven't been inclined to sell, but I have had them appraised, and maybe some day I will become inclined to cash in.

[Hekate]

90. Agreed, completely.

:hi:

[Art_from_Ark]

95. Thank you

:hi:

[hugo_from_TN]

25. Yes and Yes

When all the little guys start buying and trying to cash in, the big boys are slipping out before the bubble pops.

[KonaKane]

27. Don't listen to that gasbag. My wife trades gold daily and she has heard nothing of the sort.

Just more gobbledeespeak from the crying nincompoop.

[theophilus]

33. Beck is talking up gold. He is talking down civilization. n/t

[KonaKane]

68. And all the while talking out his ass.

Which is quite a feat, if you think about it.

[MadHound]

28. You would be a fool to buy gold now as an investment.

Despite the so called "experts" you hear on various adds, gold isn't going to double in price over the next few years. It is probably going to continue to muddle along at the price it is now, with a price swing of a couple of hundred dollars. Unless you start to see some serious inflation in this country, or the economy really tanking, gold isn't a safe investment.

If you want to jump in on the gold wagon, your best bet is to invest in a mutual fund of gold dealers. These folks get paid when the price goes up, when the price goes down, or simply when gold is moving. It is a way of jumping in on the gold market that is less expensive and less risky than actual gold.

If you want to by some gold itself as a hedge against the collapse of civilization, my suggestion is that you start scouring flea markets, antique dealers and estate auctions. You can often find gold jewelry and other gold items quite cheap.

Whatever you do, don't buy gold from the TV charlatans, they'll screw you badly.

[WinkyDink]

42. You haven't been to a flea market, an antique store, or auction lately, have you? No fools be there.

[MadHound]

43. Actually I go to all of those regularly,

Yes, there are some places, especially in urban areas, that are pretty knowledgeable. There are other areas however where people don't know what they've got. Those are the ones to look out for.

I see you're from Pennsylvania, that area has been pretty well shopped out, except for pockets here and there. I live in Missouri, and we haven't been shopped out at all, except for urban areas. You get out into the country and you're going to find some excellent bargains.

[Doremus]

55. It's not hanging on trees but if you are persistent you can find buys

on gold at all those venues, mostly in the form of unmarked or broken jewelry. Sleepers exist wherever there are sellers who don't take time to examine and research before selling.

[AnArmyVeteran]

32. Does anyone eat Gold as food?

Just wondering... if the monetary system collapsed food shortages would immediately follow. Anyone who is growing their own food will do okay, but those with stockpiles of gold will starve. I believe gold is non-fat though. No sugars, no cholesterol, but also no calories or anything you need to survive.

Gold, it's the perfect 'fear food'...

[slackmaster]

40. You can cast it into bullets, and use them to shoot food

Then you can melt the used bullets down and cast them into new bullets.

[Art_from_Ark]

82. Monetary systems that have collapsed include the

Zimbabwe dollar, Brazilian reis/cruzeiro/cruzado/new cruzado, Argentine peso, Serbian dinar, German mark (twice), French franc, and Hungarian pengo. Were all of these crashes accompanied by food shortages?

[quaker bill]

35. Yes it is

but it will only burst once most of Beck's rubes have bought in. The fundamentals are not there to support prices in this range other than on mere speculation.

[Warpy]

39. I'd be very careful now

because they're starting to push gold and gold plated coins to the boobs out there. Usually when something gets pushed to the working class, it's over and they're just looking for the last few suckers to support the price while the big money pulls out. Then they let it crash while the suckers are left holding the bag and the tungsten salted gold bars.

It will really be over when all those ads to send in your gold "joolery" for cash go off the air.

[izzybeans]

41. It's like everything else we bet on. It's just some metal from the earth we impart value to..

It's no different than any other random object that we are willing to hand over too many pieces of painted paper for. Just don't get caught with the hot potato in your hands when the game ends. Hold it until its really warm and dump it.

Thankfully for the gold merchants, it is no longer tacky to wear big Run DMC chains. It's the new white hipster fashion. When the hipster kids move back to silver chains, sell your gold. Me I'm waiting on the calcite market to blow up. Don't be hatin' my rocks. ;)

[AllentownJake]

45. Gold will always have some value

Gold is a hedge. Unless you are wealthy and you want a hedge I recommend silver or a Gun.

[Johonny]

61. other metals have more industrial applications

even silver has some industrial applications. Gold isn't a very useful metal. Worse people don't throw it away into the garbage thus it stays in circulation forever. It's value is all for the image and prestige. People buy iron, copper, zinc etc because you actually can build real things people need out of it.

[Art_from_Ark]

71. Geez, that is a very uninformed post

You don't seem to know the first thing about gold. For a brief introduction, please go here:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/gold/

[Morning Dew]

46. Gold may hit $1500.

CALL NOW ! ACT NOW !

Well, that's what they say, anyway.

I had a friend who thought he'd join the Hunt brothers and be a silver mogul.... fortunately, he didn't go bankrupt like they did, but he did get burned pretty bad.

[callous taoboy]

47. Hah! I read this as "God bubble" and said, "Oh, let it be so!"

[Rex]

48. There will never be a gold 'bubble' burst.

Gold will never be worthless, like paper.

[yodoobo]

50. hard to say. But its not a conservative thing

The gold rise is something that is occuring well beyond our borders as well as within.

Its well beyond the ability of a bunch of tea baggers to influence.

[AllentownJake]

52. Max Keiser

Who is not a conservative in any shape or form, has been talking about Gold for 4 years.

[Elwood P Dowd]

53. I own 5 old $20.00 gold double eagles from the late 1890s.

Paid about $350.00 for each of them back in the 1990s, and someone told me recently they would probably bring about $1,400.00 each (or more) today. It might be the right time to put them on eBay. I need the money, and they are not helping me much setting in my bank safe deposit box.

[Hekate]

59. Check to see how much they are worth to coin collectors, as well. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

99. I don't know if I would trust putting my coins on eBay

eBay's OK for small sales, but I would hesitate putting some coin worth more than a couple hundred bucks up on eBay. I know a coin dealer here in Japan who has had mixed luck selling coins on eBay.

[customerserviceguy]

56. History shows us

that when inflation fears start, and all the way through an inflationary period, gold rises. When everybody and his dog wants to buy gold, the inflationary period is about to end, and at that time, you sell.

That's what my observations from 30-35 years ago say.

[old mark]

57. Almost 30 years ago gold was suposedly going to go to record high prices -

manny speculators bought it and the price indeed went up with demand. I knew a guy who sold his business and his house and bought all the gold he could buy at $1000 an ounce, which turned out to be the high point and he lost everything he invested and eventually would up working as a chauffer for a limosine service.

Gold is worth buying for investment purposes if yu bought it a few years ago when the price was much lower...it is near or at a record high which is NOT the time to buy anything. Also, remember - gold is bought and sold by businesses that will make a profit whether they buy or sell, which means it will come out of your pocket. Gold is not a great investment unless you are predicating your purchase on the end of civilization and a barter based economy, in which case a better investment would be a few guns and some stored food.

Glenn Beck is no better as an investment counsellor than he is as a newsman - he is a shill for the company selling gold and nothing more.

mark

[TheWebHead]

58. the pushing of gold is bipartisan on radio

my view on gold is that it's shiny yellow rocks with perceived value and priced at a level way outside the value of its limited industrial use. When most gold is extracted in the range of $800/oz., when it diverges several hundred dollars outside that range, like when it traded in the $400 area 5 years ago and its current $1200+ range, you have to assume that the longer term trend will see it revert towards its extraction cost price.

[Art_from_Ark]

65. Gold is not a rock

It is a metal. A metal that has been valued as a monetary instrument since the invention of money. If you think that it is overvalued because it only has "limited industrial use", then I will gladly trade you a pound of my copper, or a pound of my aluminum, for a pound of your .999 gold.

[JNelson6563]

63. Gold is safe.

It's been high for a long time. When Bush took office it was under $400. Went long on gold then. It's long been worth way more than that. The only conservatives investing in that are conservative investors. Though what sort of fool would buy now, at these ridiculous prices?

It won't go much higher but I doubt it will plummet either.

Julie

[Art_from_Ark]

64. In response to your question

You have to realize some things about the gold market.

Forget about Glenn Beck for the moment. He's a bit player, if that.

Gold is a worldwide market. The relatively little amount that is traded in the United States is not going to have a significant effect either way on the world price of gold. There are lots of new players in today's gold market, including nouveau riche countries like India and China. At the same time, European central banks that were notorious for manipulating the gold market before the euro have agreed to voluntary annual limits on gold sales. It's no coincidence that the price of gold has made large strides since 2002, when the euro became official.

I will also say that, speaking as someone who bought his first gold coin in 1968 when gold was $35/ounce and who has followed the gold market for nearly every year since then, there are a lot of really uninformed opinions in this thread.

[theophilus]

84. Thanks for your input. Whereabouts in Ark are you?

I'm in Hot Springs.

[cbdo2007]

85. off topic - but I sure wish I was down in Ark looking for Quartz....

Went down to Jessieville a few times last year (from Kansas City) but with baby on the way wife isn't letting me out of the state for the foreseeable future :) There's always next year I guess.

[Art_from_Ark]

92. I'm originally from Northwest Arkansas

I'm in Japan now, but go back for a visit from time to time.

I've been to Hot Springs a couple of times, including one time when I came down Highway 7 on a bicycle, and another time when I got a free meal at a Japanese restaurant because of a coincidental encounter. I was kind of disappointed to find that all of the hot springs have been channelled to hotels, with the exception of a small public fountain. But Garland County and the surrounding area are really beautiful, and I would like to go back for another visit some day.

[JCMach1]

66. IF everyone is pumping it, time to sell it short...

[Art_from_Ark]

69. Gold is not a stock

It is a metal that has worldwide demand, in large part due to declining confidence in paper currencies. Shorting gold would be a sucker7s bet.

[JCMach1]

86. There is an ETF for everything these days- including shorting gold

You would have to time it though...

GLL, the UltraShort Gold ProShares ETF acts as an inverse ETF and a leveraged ETF by tracking twice the inverse performance of the gold bullion as measured by the US Dollar p.m. fixing price for delivery in London. The gold ETF is constructed to rise as the index falls and vice versa.

[Art_from_Ark]

94. I wouldn't touch an ETF with a 10-foot pole

And I certainly wouldn't want to try to short the gold market right now. As I said, it would be a sucker's bet, for the following reasons:

The world, in general, does not trust fiat paper currencies, especially people in countries that have had particularly bad experiences with paper. This includes most countries in Africa, most countries in South America, various European countries, and several Asian countries as well. In fact, the United States has been rather lucky, in that it has not had to scrap one currency and start from scratch with another. In fact, it has the second-oldest continuous currency in the world, second only to the British pound-sterling. So for the most part, Americans living today have been insulated from real monetary crises (the inflation of the '70s notwithstanding). But there is worldwide demand for gold as a means of preparing for a possible monetary crisis.

At the same time, there is no longer (well, for the time being, at least) the specter of European central banks dumping gold on the market when their target price is reached. As I noted to the original poster, it is no coincidence that gold has made significant gains since 2002, when the euro became official and European central banks agreed to voluntary limits on their sales of gold. The wild card now seems to be China, and to a lesser extent India, plus various other smaller bulk buyers. China could conceivably dump a bunch of gold on the market and cause prices to fall, but it seems like they may be content to be sitting on "real money" for the time being.

Personally speaking, I am a little nervous about these highs myself. I would not recommend that people buy gold bullion now, especially if they have no background in the gold or coin markets. But at the same time, it seems like there is major support in the 4 figures now. The people who proclaim that they will be buying once gold goes back to $350 or whatever don't seem to have a clue that the fundamentals of the gold market have changed dramatically since the price blipped momentarily to an $850 high in January 1980

[Politicalboi]

70. This reminds me of

A Twilight Zone episode with relevance to our gold situation
Submitted by Electrorocket on Sun, 10/12/2008 - 22:25
in Daily Paul Liberty Forum


To escape the law after stealing $1 million worth of gold bricks, a band of four gold thieves, led by scientist-mastermind Farwell (Beregi), hide in a secret cave in the desert. Farwell has designed suspended animation chambers and set them for 100 years, figuring that by 2061, nobody will remember the robbery and the gang will be in the clear.

When they wake up, everything starts to go awry. One of the gang is already dead, a mere skeleton, because a rock had fallen and shattered his glass chamber. Greed soon begins consuming the others. Brooks demands that DeCruz drive the getaway car. DeCruz kills Brooks by running him over with the getaway truck, but then finds that the brakes do not work and barely escapes before the vehicle crashes into a ravine. Consequently Farwell and DeCruz must walk through the desert in summertime, carrying as much gold as they can.

Later, Farwell, who is older and somewhat obese, loses his canteen, and DeCruz forces him to ante up one gold bar for each sip of water. When the "fee" goes up to two bars, Farwell strikes DeCruz with the gold bricks, killing him. Farwell then continues to a highway, lugging the gold he refuses to abandon. Finally, weak and dehydrated, he collapses. A futuristic car drives up and Farwell offers his gold to the couple inside in exchange for water and a ride to the nearest town, but expires a few moments later.

As the man gets back into his car to report Farwell's death to the police, he quizzically remarks to his wife, "Can you imagine that? He offered this to me as if it was really worth something." The wife vaguely recalls that it had, indeed been valuable sometime in the distant past. The husband replies, "Sure, about a.... hundred years or so ago, before they found a way of manufacturing it," and tosses the gold bar away.

Closing narration
“ The last of four Rip Van Winkles who all died precisely the way they lived, chasing an idol across the sand to wind up bleached dry in the hot sun as so much desert flotsam, worthless as the gold bullion they built a shrine to. Tonight's lesson...in the Twilight Zone.

[Art_from_Ark]

81. Of course, in other Twilight Zone episodes

a little boy can kill people just by wishing they were dead, a store mannequin can come to life, people kill each other to try to escape from their earth-like planet, people in another neighborhood fall into pandemonium because they think the monsters are coming to get them, people in a nursing home can magically return to their youth, machines can turn themselves on and off, and a doll can act like Jason of Friday the 13th fame

[cbdo2007]

72. I won't say there's a gold bubble...I'll just say that you should hold off investing

in gold for about 10 more years and then buy in when it gets back down to $350 an ounce. Then, wait another 15-20 years when it gets back up to $800+ per ounce. Then wait 20 years after that and repeat as long as you'd like.

Really though stocks are a MUCH better investment. Rather than waiting 20 years to double your investment like you have to with gold, you could have doubled your money many, many times over in stocks these past few years. We've still got a ways up to go also so there are plenty of great companies to jump into still before the market tumbles again.

[Art_from_Ark]

74. Well, geez, if you had bought gold in 2000

you could be making 4X on your investment now. And if you had bought stocks then, where would you be now?

[cbdo2007]

83. Is this even worth arguing with?

You're missing the point completely.

Just like I said in my post regarding gold, you would be crazy to invest now in gold just like you would have been crazy to invest in stocks in 2000 when the market was at a peak as well.

So if you had $50,000 right now...you're saying you would put it in gold rather than RAX or CBOU or COH??? If not, then you're proving my point so what's the point of arguing.

Different times call for different investment strategies.

[Art_from_Ark]

98. And your point is what?

You want me to buy into a company which has been listed on the exchange for 2 years, shot up from penny stock land to a high of 21, and is now going back down?

Damn! How could I be so crazy as to invest in gold, which I have followed for 42 years, rather than in a stock which has only been listed for 2 years and is going down???????

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

87. I won't reply. Your brain is mush.

But it can come back soon. Your intelligence can return.

Just stay away from Beck's TV or radio shows. He and Rush are known to paralyze brain cells.

Well, maybe I will reply, with an uninformed opinion. Gold is not in a bubble, it's just priced high. Some will lose money when the price goes down. But the price probably won't collapse as quickly or severely as in the dot-com bubble or real estate bubble. That's one Bozo's guess.

:hi:

[KurtNYC]

88. Beck's biggest sponsor is that gold selling company

He attracts a fearful, gullible crowd and the gold company turns fear into profit.

Beck is like the salty nuts that they put on the bar to sell more beer (and we know how much Teabaggers love salty nuts).

[Odin2005]

93. The Libertarian morons have hyped up the gold price.

[Art_from_Ark]

97. Yeah, those Libertarian morons have influenced China, India, Sri Lanka

even European central banks. They're all falling for the Libertarian hype! LOL! They should invest in something of REAL value-- like British Petroleum stock!