Why 'The Regime' Hates Gold

thenews 2015.12.25 14:26

A meme is now circulating that gold is the investment equivalent of a pet rock, and that the smart investor should sell gold, and buy stocks. That’s a ridiculous notion. In fact, if you believe in buying low and selling high, this is the time to buy gold, and sell stocks.

It pays to remain as objective as you can be when analyzing any investment. People have a tendency to fall in love with an asset class, usually because it’s treated them so well. We saw that happen most recently with Internet stocks in the late ’90s and with houses up to 2007. Investment bubbles are driven primarily by emotion, although there’s always some rationale for the emotion to latch on to. Perversely, when it comes to investing, reason is recruited mainly to provide cover for passion and preconception.

In the same way, people tend to hate certain investments unreasonably, usually at the bottom of a bear market, after they’ve lost a lot of money; even thinking about the asset means reliving the pain and loss. Love-and-hate cycles occur for all investment classes.

But there’s only one investment I can think of that many people either love or hate reflexively, almost without regard to market performance: gold. And, to a lesser degree, silver. It’s strange that these two metals provoke such powerful psychological reactions - especially among people who dislike them. Nobody has an instinctive hatred of iron, copper, aluminum, or cobalt. The reason, of course, is that the main use of gold has always been as money. And people have strong feelings about money. Let’s spend a moment looking at how gold’s fundamentals fit in with the psychology of the current market.

What Gold Is - and Why It’s Hated

Let me first disclose that I’ve always been favorably inclined toward gold, simply because I think money is a good thing. Not everyone feels that way, however. Some, with a Platonic view, think that money and commercial activity in general are degrading and beneath the “better” sort of people - although they’re a little hazy about how mankind rose above the level of living hand-to-mouth, grubbing for roots and berries. Some think it’s “the root of all evil,” a view that reflects a certain attitude toward the material world in general. Some better-informed people (who have actually read Paul of Tarsus) think it’s just the love of money that’s the root of all evil. Some others see the utility of money, but think it should be controlled somehow - as if only the proper authorities know how to manage the dangerous substance.

From an economic viewpoint, however, money is just a medium of exchange and a store of value. Efforts to turn it into a political football invariably are signs of a hidden agenda, or perhaps a psychological aberration.

But, that said, money does have a moral as well as an economic significance. And it’s important to get that out in the open and have it understood. My view is that money is a high moral good. It represents all the good things you hope to have, do, and provide in the future. In a manner of speaking, it’s distilled life. That’s why it’s important to have a sound money, one that isn’t subject to political manipulation.

Over the centuries, many things have been used as money, prominently including cows, salt, and seashells. Aristotle thought about this in the 4th century BCE and arrived at 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.

There’s much more that can be said on this topic, and it’s important to grasp the essentials in order to understand the controversy about whether now is a good time to buy. But this isn’t the place for an extended explanation.

Keep these things in mind, though, 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 take some recent statements, assertions, and opinions that have been promulgated in the media and analyze them. Many impress me as completely uninformed, even stupid. But since they’re floating around in the infosphere, I suppose they need to be addressed.