# Is there a GQ response to the right wing marketing of gold? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 13, 2009, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433 "2009-11-13T12:12:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/21 "2009-11-14T19:27:43Z")
> [@](#): > > Of course it is. According to Investments by Bodie, Kane, and Marcus (a leading finance textbook), “In addition to financial assets, individuals might invest directly in real assets. For example, real estate or commodities such as precious metals or agricultural products are real assets that might form part of an investment portfolio.” When I’m investing, my goal is for my wealth to increase. How can buying gold accomplish this? I can invest in stock in a company, and when that company makes some product, they’re producing wealth, of which I get some share. I can invest in land, which can become more valuable if I grow crops on it, or build something on it, or even if someone else builds something on other land nearby. I can invest in an education, which will make my skills more valuable, and so increase my wealth that way. I can invest in a bank account, in which case the bank will use my money to make the above investments and others, and give me a share of the increased wealth in interest. But if I buy gold, none of that happens: The wealth associated with a gram of gold doesn’t change. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/22 "2009-11-14T19:51:22Z")
I work for a major discount brokerage firm and I talk to quite a few gold bugs. Every conversation is at least a 30 minute right wing/conspiracy nutcase rant. An incoherent combination of birther, tea party, Armageddon, and socialism nonsense. Take a look at the commentary that some of these nuts often add to news stories reporting the price of gold: [One story](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-futures-rise-as-dollar-slips-2009-11-13) ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/23 "2009-11-14T20:03:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > When I’m investing, my goal is for my wealth to increase. How can buying gold accomplish this? I can invest in stock in a company, and when that company makes some product, they’re producing wealth, of which I get some share. I can invest in land, which can become more valuable if I grow crops on it, or build something on it, or even if someone else builds something on other land nearby. I can invest in an education, which will make my skills more valuable, and so increase my wealth that way. I can invest in a bank account, in which case the bank will use my money to make the above investments and others, and give me a share of the increased wealth in interest. But if I buy gold, none of that happens: The wealth associated with a gram of gold doesn’t change. You’re saying no one has ever increased their personal wealth on the commodities market? There are entire firms which generate tons of wealth through commodities brokerage. Commodities have intrinsic value, and wealth can be generated by shrewd investors who buy commodities at a given price and sell it at a profit. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/24 "2009-11-14T20:56:43Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > When I’m investing, my goal is for my wealth to increase. How can buying gold accomplish this? I can invest in stock in a company, and when that company makes some product, they’re producing wealth, of which I get some share. I can invest in land, which can become more valuable if I grow crops on it, or build something on it, or even if someone else builds something on other land nearby. I can invest in an education, which will make my skills more valuable, and so increase my wealth that way. I can invest in a bank account, in which case the bank will use my money to make the above investments and others, and give me a share of the increased wealth in interest. But if I buy gold, none of that happens: The wealth associated with a gram of gold doesn’t change. This is a misunderstanding of the process. Value of an investment increases because people want to pay more money to purchase it than you did originally. If people want to pay more money for gold next year than this year it is no different than if people want to pay more money for your house next year than this year. In both cases it is the entire external economy that has changed its perception of value. Whether the increase is “real” or not doesn’t matter in the least. Many companies have stock that increases based on investors’ judgments (or blind guesses) on what it will be worth in the future. Commodities have prices that depend on peoples’ guesses about scarcity and demand in the future. Collectibles go up and down by whims of the culture. All of these are equal in status to the supposed gains of creating a product or growing a crop. Neither of these is wealth. They only provide value if someone is willing to pay for them, and only give profit if someone is willing to pay more than they cost to produce. Wealth is an intangible just as value is. Both apply to gold in the same way they apply to everything in an economy. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/25 "2009-11-14T21:10:41Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > The most cogent criticism I’ve heard about investing in gold is that the supply of gold always increases, due to the peculiar nature of gold as an element: it doesn’t “combine”, there is not such thing as gold oxide, gold doesn’t rust. Whatever form gold takes, its still gold, you can melt it down at any time. In a practical sense this is correct. With few exceptions gold likes to revert to it’s elemental state, but gold is far from inert. It does form oxides. In fact the tendency of gold to lose the oxygen makes it a great candidate as an oxidation catalyst. I have seen it used to make epoxides. Gold coordinates well with sulfur and cyanide and there are many gold compounds available for purchase. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/26 "2009-11-14T21:48:13Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > I distinctly remember as far back as 1992-1995 that the Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy radio programs had a LOT of gold and silver\* investment adverts on them, to the point where I brought it up to the small group of very right-wing co-workers which I knew. Liddy still pushes gold all the time. He also has ads for “live longer with these secret miracle vitamins” type things, I think. But mostly I want to know how he was able to use the instrumental riff of _Crash Into Me_ by the Dave Matthews Band for his filler music. I can’t imagine Dave allowing Liddy to use his music. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/27 "2009-11-14T22:15:13Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > In fact, gold fluctuates very much like the stock market does. See [this graph](http://www.usagold.com/reference/prices/history.html). > > That’s because gold is perceived as a hedge in bad times. When the market goes up, gold prices decline. In bad times, the market goes down but gold goes up. True, we are somewhat in an anomaly now with the market increasing along with gold, but the market has recovered much quicker than the economy and its likely gold won’t keep up if the market continues to climb. > > It’s also not true that gold never decreases in value, as shown by [this other graph](http://goldprice.org/inflation-adjusted-gold-price.html). Gold has been down in real terms for 30 years. That’s not forever - everything goes up in the very long term because of inflation in the global economy - but it’s a generation and worse than the stock market over that time. > > Gold prices are irrational because they can only be justified as an assumption that everything is getting worse with time. As I said above, in the long term that is never true. I think you’re misinterpreting **Airman Doors** ’s point. Yes, people can take a bath in gold investments, because the value of gold does fluctuate greatly short-term as the “contrarian” investment, the hedge against falling stock prices. When specvulative investments go down, gold goes up, and contrariwise. But long-term it’s been on a steady increase in value since we went off the gold standard. This does not mean short-term fluctuations, some of them extreme, don’t exist – it means if you bought gold in, say, 1978 (date picked at random) and held it until today, there has been a steady long-term increate in value, in terms of what your investment would bring. In some ways, it’s like ‘global warming’ – the past behavior and forecast is for a moderate steady overall rise; selected contrary short-term examples do not disprove this long-term phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/28 "2009-11-14T23:45:54Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > But long-term it’s been on a steady increase in value since we went off the gold standard. This does not mean short-term fluctuations, some of them extreme, don’t exist – it means if you bought gold in, say, 1978 (date picked at random) and held it until today, there has been a steady long-term increate in value, in terms of what your investment would bring. I think that this is only sort of true. [Here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_price.png) is a chart of the actual and inflation-adjusted gold price from 1968-2006. Yes, it’s gone up, but not by very much, and certainly not much compared to the S&P 500 Index. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/29 "2009-11-15T01:23:16Z")
According to The Economist, the latest ratchet upward in the price of gold was driven by a large purchase by the Indian central bank, which wanted to reduce its exposure to dollar-denominated assets. This has prompted hope or fear, depending on your point of view, that the Chinese central bank will follow suit. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/30 "2009-11-15T01:26:44Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > I think you’re misinterpreting **Airman Doors** ’s point. Yes, people can take a bath in gold investments, because the value of gold does fluctuate greatly short-term as the “contrarian” investment, the hedge against falling stock prices. When specvulative investments go down, gold goes up, and contrariwise. > > But long-term it’s been on a steady increase in value since we went off the gold standard. This does not mean short-term fluctuations, some of them extreme, don’t exist – it means if you bought gold in, say, 1978 (date picked at random) and held it until today, there has been a steady long-term increate in value, in terms of what your investment would bring. > > In some ways, it’s like ‘global warming’ – the past behavior and forecast is for a moderate steady overall rise; selected contrary short-term examples do not disprove this long-term phenomenon. If you can say this then it’s equally true that the stock market never goes down in value. And neither does real estate. And just about everything else. That makes the statement essentially meaningless. Gold does fluctuate in value and gold is not a safe investment and is not safer than the stock market. That negates the entirety of what Airman Doors said. In the long term we are all dead. Your investments have to pay off in your lifetime. Gold hasn’t in real terms. Goldbugs are conspiacy theorist loons. There’s nothing you can do to change that. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/31 "2009-11-15T03:55:30Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I think that this is only sort of true. [Here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_price.png) is a chart of the actual and inflation-adjusted gold price from 1968-2006. Yes, it’s gone up, but not by very much, and certainly not much compared to the S&P 500 Index. Let’s do the comparison. One dollar invested in the S&P 500 in January 1, 1978 would be worth $24.60 in Dec 31, 2008. [Cite](http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm). Note that I picked an endpoint during one of the worst bear markets of the post-war era. An oz of gold was worth about $170 on Jan 1, 1978 and $875 at the end of 2008, coming off of the worst post-war financial crisis when gold should be worth zillions. Dividing, $1 of gold bought in the beginning translates to $5.14 now. 5.14 \<\< 24.60. ## Hey, gold might be a terrific investment going forward. But it sure has been a dud in the past. **What do baseball cards, art and gold have in common? They’re _really really_ cool** I would expect gold to have lower returns over the long run. Like art, people like to hold the shiny metal, while investing in x share in Big Corp is boring. So they have to pay a premium for it, translating into lower returns. Add in conspiracy fantasies and gold’s allure becomes overwhelming. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/32 "2009-11-15T04:37:03Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > Cite? I’m not aware of any studies correlating investment choices with political ideology. Most conservatives I know are pretty enthusiastic capitalists, so I’d be surprised if they were avoiding stocks. I was using the small letters in a more general sense and not in terms of political leanings. Capital “C” conservatives I’ve known (we sell a lot of bullion at work) tend to be in and out of everything depending on what’s hot or what’s being recommended as the next hot thing. Not based on any cite but the people who keep cashing in one with us to buy the other and then the opposite months (or years) later. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/33 "2009-11-15T05:43:54Z")
> [@](#): > > You’re saying no one has ever increased their personal wealth on the commodities market? There are entire firms which generate tons of wealth through commodities brokerage. Commodities have intrinsic value, and wealth can be generated by shrewd investors who buy commodities at a given price and sell it at a profit. I said wealth, not value. Yes, people have made money on the commodities market, but then, people have made money on the lottery, too. With land that gets developed, or stock in companies that produce something, or the like, the thing you’re buying is actually changing, and thereby driving the change in price of it. With gold, though, the gold itself doesn’t change, so changes in the price are due entirely to inherently unpredictable fluctuations, and trying to buy when it fluctuates low and sell when it fluctuates high is just gambling. > [@](#): > > If people want to pay more money for gold next year than this year it is no different than if people want to pay more money for your house next year than this year. Maybe I’ve done some work on my house, re-painting it, replacing the roof, or whatever, to give it a reason to be worth more. But even if I sell my house in exactly the same condition as when I bought it, I’m still coming out ahead on my investment, since I’ve had however many years of a roof over my head (or however many years of tenants paying me rent, if I’m not living there). Gold doesn’t keep the rain out. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/34 "2009-11-20T00:30:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > With gold, though, the gold itself doesn’t change, so changes in the price are due entirely to inherently unpredictable fluctuations, and trying to buy when it fluctuates low and sell when it fluctuates high is just gambling. Changes in the value of _any_ investment, other than those due solely to the passage of time (as for example, a bond approaching maturity), are due to inherently unpredictable fluctuations. Predictable events are already factored into the price. The conventional difference between a “gamble” and an “investment” is that investors seek compensation for assuming risk, whereas gamblers don’t. Gamblers _pay_ for the “privilege” of assuming risk. Investments can be _extremely_ speculative (penny stocks, options on commodity futures), and can easily tumble to zero value, but if the investor’s _a priori_ expected rate of return correlates positively with volatility, they’re investments nonetheless. > [@Chronos](#): > > Maybe I’ve done some work on my house, re-painting it, replacing the roof, or whatever, to give it a reason to be worth more. But even if I sell my house in exactly the same condition as when I bought it, I’m still coming out ahead on my investment, since I’ve had however many years of a roof over my head (or however many years of tenants paying me rent, if I’m not living there). Gold doesn’t keep the rain out. Of course not. Gold isn’t _supposed_ to keep out rain. It sucks as a building material. It has different uses–decoration, filling teeth. So what? Like real estate, and like all commodities, gold has both consumption and investment uses. Some people buy corn futures because they want to make corn syrup next fall; some buy them as a speculative investment. Likewise with gold. You may or may not like gold, or think it’s a good investment, but to deny that it’s an investment at all is fatuous and flies in the face of hundreds of years of financial theory and every financial textbook ever written, anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/35 "2009-11-20T00:56:41Z")
OK, if I buy gold for the purpose of decorating something, and get whatever value there is in having that thing decorated for a few years before selling it, then I could justify calling it an investment. But I suspect that most people who “invest” in gold just lock it away in a vault somewhere, or even pay someone else to lock it away in _their_ vault somewhere, and so get no utility out of it while they own it. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/36 "2009-11-20T01:08:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, if I buy gold for the purpose of decorating something, and get whatever value there is in having that thing decorated for a few years before selling it, then I could justify calling it an investment. But I suspect that most people who “invest” in gold just lock it away in a vault somewhere, or even pay someone else to lock it away in _their_ vault somewhere, and so get no utility out of it while they own it. And you could buy a stock that never once paid dividends. That, too, would get you no utility out of it. As pointed out above, many people buy stocks for their capital appreciation, not any earnings the stock may generate. They can’t live under their stock certificates. But they are investments, just as commodities are. You’re trying to define the word _investment_ in your own way, and welcome to do so, but in the world of finance, it is a universally-accepted fact that gold counts as an investment. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/37 "2009-11-20T03:50:31Z")
As an investment, gold (or gold certificates) have a property that offsets its high volatility and low long-run returns. It might be negatively correlated with the stock market, such that it “zigs” when the stock market “zags”. In the technical parlance it may have a negative beta. (The paper below attacks this hypothesis, but it at least finds that gold is a near-zero beta asset.) For those interested in investing in gold… I’d recommend other investments. But if you’re really really adamant, you should at least read about its properties from someone other than a salesman or political commentator, right? Here’s a link: !PDF! : deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63919/1/fei\_fan\_2009.pdf > [@abstract from the link](#): > > This paper examines several of the explanations commonly provided regarding gold and its price movements. We consider the safe haven, inflation hedge, and dollar destruction hypotheses. The results are mixed. Our data do not support the theories that gold is a safe haven or an inflation hedge. We find that gold is a zero-beta asset and there is a strong negative correlation between gold and the value of the US dollar in the post Bretton-Woods era. The author characterizes gold as just another foreign currency, albeit one that doesn’t pay interest. ---
**Author:** ![groo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@groo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groo)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/38 "2009-11-20T05:40:48Z")
Hmm. Am I more right wing than I thought? I rarely watch or listen to right-wing media, given that my time on earth is finite, but still seem to hear a lot of gold ads, particularly on Air America. I’ve been buying gold like crazy over the past two years, but stopped buying and have gradually sold off half of my holdings over the past few months. In my view, gold doesn’t change value at all – it’s like a physical constant, and everything else changes value relative to it. So, crazy gyrations in the price of gold are actually crazy gyrations in the value of the dolllar. But that’s MHO and this is GQ. Do you really think this is a right vs left distinction? I never thought of the left as anti-business; more that at the core, we believe the tax rules shouldn’t rob the poor to subsidize the rich and that it’s okay to spend money on social welfare programs. (Having a safety net isn’t a right; it’s just that, as a prosperous country, it’s rather selfish of us if we don’t use some of that prosperity to help the less fortunate among us.) ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/39 "2009-11-20T06:45:51Z")
The marketing of gold on AM radio in general and talk radio in particular doesn’t seem to be a right wing thing at all to me. If you listen to Randi Rhodes or Rush Limbaugh or even Kim Komando’s tech talk show, they all sell gold. I used to listen to a lot of talk radio at my last job and the commonality of the advertisers across the spectrum is surprising. I think that the gold marketeers must have some demographic info that leads them to believe that the talk radio audience is a good target for them. It doesn’t seem to matter if the show is right, left, or neutral in format. And he hits “post” and all the Google ads on the SDMB switch to selling gold! I love it. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433/40 "2009-11-20T07:37:47Z")
> [@groo](#): > > In my view, gold doesn’t change value at all – it’s like a physical constant, and everything else changes value relative to it. So, crazy gyrations in the price of gold are actually crazy gyrations in the value of the dollar. But that’s MHO and this is GQ. You could make silver your numéraire as well. Or oil. Or wheat. Or pork bellies. And there are some very specific things that can affect the price of gold such as the central bank of England and other countries selling off a big chunk of their holdings in the 1990s or manipulation by Russia mining interests. Lots of these factors have little to do with the strength or buying power of US currency. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-gq-response-to-the-right-wing-marketing-of-gold/517433.md?page=3)