Thursday 9 June 2005

Gold bugs v gold standard

"There will always and forever be a confusion concerning the conceptual distinction between advocating a gold standard as a path to monetary reform and suggesting gold ownership as an lucrative investment vehicle," says the Mises Economic Blog this morning. "Fortunately for the theorists, the viability of the reform path is not bound up with the predictive power of the financial practitioners."

The Mises blog links to a New York Times article on investement gold bugs: "It's a charming piece of reporting," they say, "that does no harm to the sector of the investment community that is devoted to gold as a investment," and should they say be of interest to Austrians -- and perhaps also to others who share the confusion over the distinction between gold bugs and advocates of securing the currency by means of precious metals.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course it is the only currency accepted in the afterlife as well. Those who invest in gold do so *because* they are advocates of a gold standard, see the Fed as evil etc etc.and are usually permabears..Suggest you take a look at www.gold-eagle.com -sentiment is no different to Mises org. Reisman needs to answer the clue-phone...anyway if some countries are silly enough to add gold to their reserve currencies the European banks will be more than willing to sell their stashes to them.

It's pointless arguing this - for every article you post from a gold-peddling site I can post another saying the opposite, and I doubt I can change your mind. You certainly can't change mine ;-)

Peter Cresswell said...

Ruth, you said, "Those who invest in gold do so *because* they are advocates of a gold standard ..."

Ah, not so. That's the point.

Anonymous said...

Gold is for doomsday groupies- always has been. So its deflation now is it? Mises was calling hyper-INflation 1 year ago. And they cite Paul Krugman as an authority - any port in a storm. Gold has no intrinsic value whatsoever.The current inventory of gold is at least 50 times its annual industrial requirement.The Gold standard was rendered obsolete with ETF.I could go on and on. You will have to do a lot better than show me economic sophistries from a couple of eccentrics. Reality is the final arbiter - is it not?

I don't tell you how to do your job - don't tell me how to do mine.