Well said, Josh, but I would go further and say that if there is systemic shock, the most valuable commodity is food.

The gold bugs are in love with the allure and glitter of gold, but have they ever considered how they would pay rent with the darn thing?

To me gold is not money (at least today), and to 4plexowner it is, so assume we were negotiating the price of my used vehicle, and he wanted to pay me in gold. I wouldn’t make the deal. I would rather have dollars than gold. Thus, we don’t have a medium of exchange. So by definition, how can it be money?

At what point would someone like me become convinced to take gold instead of dollars? When would Trader Joes take gold instead of dollars? Only if there were a widespread acceptance of gold as a medium of exchange.

And I wouldn’t bet my hard earned money that gold will keep going up. Gold is a very volatile commodity. It could go up to $1600, and it could go down to $115. And no one would be able to explain the movement in either direction, except to say investors were excited, or panicked, or the demand for jewelry went down. The greatest demand for gold is from jewelers! So much for it being money. There seems to be no intrinsic value to it.