Word: goldings
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...there is more to gold's current boom than just a flight to safety. The metal is showing signs of a more sustained run at respectability. So while its price will at some point stop going up (and start going down), don't count on another descent into seeming irrelevance, as occurred in the 1980s and '90s. That's because of changes in the mechanics of investing in gold and the weaknesses of the current gold-free international monetary system...
...used to be that to buy gold you had to actually buy gold. In 2003, I went to Manhattan's 47th Street jewelry district to purchase a few hundred dollars in gold coins. When informed that I had to pay cash, I left and never made it back. Dumb move, I know, but indicative of the less-than-investor-friendly ways of the business. One could buy stock in gold-mining companies, but that added a layer of volatility and risk. Since 2004, however, it's been possible - through exchange-traded funds (ETFs) - to effectively own gold without the hassle...
...Gold is unlikely ever to be a great investment in the sense that buying into Microsoft in 1986 or Google in 2004 has been a great investment. The price of gold in dollars has more than quadrupled since the end of the long gold bear market in April 2001, but over the long run the return has averaged about 2% a year, says George Milling-Stanley, managing director for government affairs at the World Gold Council in New York. (That compares with about 8% for stocks.) It's less a ticket to riches than what Milling-Stanley calls an "insurance...
...past 38 years, the world has been engaged in the historical experiment of a monetary system based on a single currency (the U.S. dollar) that has no link to gold. This arrangement was shaky in its early days, in the 1970s, but seemed to work passably well for the next two decades. Lately, though, the dollar standard has been blamed for everything from China's huge buildup of dollars to the financial crisis of 2007 and '08 and a future of rampant inflation that hasn't materialized yet but that many doomsayers are convinced is on the way. And while...
...Gold is the one currency a central bank can't print," says Martin Murenbeeld, a veteran gold watcher who is chief economist for Canadian money-management firm DundeeWealth. Gold's big attraction as a pillar of the global monetary system is that it isn't beholden to national politics. The downside is that its supply increases fitfully, with no regard for the state of the world economy. That's why John Maynard Keynes called the gold standard a "barbarous relic," and why you won't find anyone outside the goldbug fringe calling for a full return to the gold standard...