THE BEST WAY TO INVEST IN GOLD

 the five characteristics of a good money

• It should be durable (which is why, say, wheat isn’t a good money - it rots).
• It should be divisible (which is why artwork isn’t a good money - you can’t cut up the Mona Lisa for change).
• It should be convenient (which is why lead isn’t a good money - it just takes too much to be of value).
• It should be consistent (which is one reason why land can’t be money - each piece is different).
• And it should have value in itself (which is why paper money leads to trouble).

Of the 92 naturally occurring elements, gold has proved the best money (silver is second). It’s not magic or superstition any more than it is for iron to be best for building bridges and aluminum for building airplanes.

Of course, we do use paper as money today, but only because it recently served as a receipt for actual money. Paper money (currency) historically has a half-life that depends on a number of factors. But it rarely lasts longer than the government that issues it. Gold is the best money because it doesn’t need to be “faith based” or rely on a government.

Keep these things in mind as you listen to the current blather from talking heads about where gold is going. Most of them are just journalists, reporters that are parroting what they heard someone else say. And the “someone else” is usually a political apologist who works for a government. Or a hack economist who works for a bank, the IMF, or a similar institution with an interest in the status quo of the last few generations. You should treat almost everything you hear about finance or economics in the popular media as no more than entertainment.

So, let’s examine some recent statements, assertions, and opinions that have been promulgated in the media and analyze them. Many impress me as completely uninformed, even stupid.

“Gold is expensive.”

This objection is worth considering - for any asset. In fact, it’s critical. We can determine the price of almost anything; that’s easy. The hard part is figuring out its value. From the founding of the U.S. until 1933, the dollar was defined as 1/20th of an ounce of gold. From 1933 to 1971, it was redefined as 1/35th of an ounce. After the 1971 dollar devaluation, the official price of the metal was raised to $42.22 - but that official number is meaningless, since nobody buys or sells the metal at that price. More importantly, people have gotten into the habit of giving the price of gold in dollars, rather than the value of the dollar in gold. But that’s another subject.

Here’s the crux of the argument. Before the creation of the US Federal Reserve in 1913, a $20 bill was just a receipt for the deposit of one ounce of gold with the Treasury. The U.S. official money supply equated more or less with the amount of gold. Now, however, dollars are being created by the trillion, and nobody really knows how many more of them are going to be shazammed into existence.

It’s hard to determine the value of anything when the inch marks on your yardstick keep drifting closer and closer together.

“The smart money is long gone from gold.”

This is an interesting assertion that is based on nothing at all. Who really is the “smart money”? How do you really know that? And how do you know exactly what they own (except for, usually, many months after the fact) or what they plan on buying or selling? The fact is that very few billionaires (John Paulson perhaps being the best known of them) have declared a major position in the metal. Gold is only a tiny proportion of the financial world’s assets, both absolutely or relative to where it has been in the past:

“Gold is risky.”

Risk is largely a function of price. And, as a general rule, the higher the price, the higher the risk, simply because supply is likely to go up and demand down - leading to a lower price. So, yes, gold is riskier at $1,100 than it was at $700 or at $200. But even when it was at $35, there was a well-known financial commentator named Eliot Janeway (I always thought he was a fool and a blowhard) who was crowing that if the U.S. government didn’t support it at $35, it would fall to $8.

In any event, risk is relative. Stocks are very risky today. Bonds are ultra-risky. Real estate, at least in many major cities, is in a near mania. And the dollar, although it’s cyclically popular, is on its way to reaching its intrinsic value. In fact, stock, bonds, property, and the dollar are all in bubble territory.

Yes, gold is risky now. But it is actually much less risky than most alternatives.

“Gold pays no interest.”

This is kind of true. But only in the sense that a $100 bill pays no interest. You can get interest from anything that functions as money, if it is lent out. Interest is the time premium of money. You will not get interest from either your $100 or your gold unless you lend them to someone. But both the dollars and the gold will earn interest if you lend them out. The problem is that once you make a loan (even to a bank, in the form of a savings account), you may not even get your principal back, much less the interest. And, of course, many banks around the world now pay negative interest for loaning them money - an absurd inversion of reality.

“Gold pays no dividends.”

Of course it doesn’t. It also doesn’t yield chocolate syrup. It’s a ridiculous objection, because only corporations pay dividends. It’s like expecting your Toyota in the driveway to pay a dividend, when only the corporation in Japan can do so. But if you want dividends related to gold, you can buy a successful gold mining stock.

“Gold costs you insurance and storage.”

This is arguably true. But it’s really a sophistic misdirection to which many people uncritically nod in agreement. You may very well want to insure and professionally store your gold. Just as you might your jewelry, your artwork, and most valuable things you own. It’s even true of the share certificates for stocks you may own. It’s true of the assets in your mutual fund (where you pay for custody, plus a management fee).

You can avoid the cost of insurance and storage by burying gold in a safe place - something that’s not a practical option with most other valuable assets. But maybe you really don’t want to store and insure your gold, because the government may prove a greater threat than any common thief. And if you pay storage and insurance, they’ll definitely know how much you have and where it is.

“Gold has no real use.”

This assertion stems from a lack of knowledge of basic chemistry as well as economics. Yes, of course people have always liked gold for jewelry, and that’s a genuine use. It’s also good for dentistry and micro-circuitry. Owners of paper money, however, have found the stuff to be absolutely worthless hundreds of times in scores of countries.

In point of fact, gold is useful because it is the most malleable, the most ductile, and the most corrosion resistant of all metals. That means we’re finding new uses for it literally every day. It’s also the second-most conductive of heat and electricity, and the second-most reflective (after silver). Gold is a hi-tech metal for these reasons. It can do things no other substance can and is part of the reason your computer works so well.

But all these reasons are strictly secondary, because gold’s main use has always been (and I’ll wager will be again) as money. Money is its highest and best use, and it’s an extremely important one.

“The U.S. can, or will, sell its gold to pay its debt, depressing the market.”

This assertion completely unrealistic. The U.S. government reports that it owns 265 million ounces of gold. Let’s say that’s worth about $300 billion right now. I’m afraid that’s chicken feed in today’s world. It’s only half of this year’s federal deficit alone. It’s only half of one year’s trade deficit. It represents perhaps only 2% of the dollars outside the U.S. The U.S. government may be the largest holder of gold in the world, but it owns less than 5% of the approximately 6 billion ounces above ground.

From the ’60s until about 2000, most Western governments were selling gold from their treasuries, working on the belief it was a “barbarous relic.” Since then, governments in the advancing world - China, India, Russia, and many other ex-socialist states - have been buying massive quantities.

Why? Because their main monetary asset is U.S. dollars, and they have come to realize those dollars are the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government. They’re becoming hot potatoes, Old Maid cards. But the dollars can be replaced with what? Sovereign wealth funds are using them to buy resources and industries, but those things aren’t money. And in the hands of bureaucrats, they’re guaranteed to be mismanaged. Expect a great deal of gold buying from governments around the world over the next few years. And it will be at much higher dollar prices.