Gold digging

“Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace,” Warren Buffett once said. “Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around to guard it. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

The price of physical gold has risen five-fold since 2001 and continues to reach new heights. There is significant interest in gold today as a means of possibly hedging against depreciating global currencies and inflation. The concern now is that for those investors who choose to load up on gold today may be placed in a disadvantageous position if history repeats itself. After gold hit a then-record high in 1980 of US $850 an ounce, it fell and failed to recover for more than 20 years. [Read more…]