The Golden Rules

Rule 1: Gold is money, not a commodity. Gold trades on the currency desks of the major banks and brokerage houses, not the commodity desks. Central banks have always regarded gold as money, yet many investors today view it as an ordinary commodity, like pork bellies. Because none of the world's currencies are backed by gold, it has become the anti-currency-the money of last resort impervious to Wall Street games, Main Street's over-consumption or QE-happy Keynesians. In 2009, gold officially became money once again when central banks around the world, including those of China, India and Russia, became net buyers for the first time in nearly 20 years. We believe that central banks are preparing for a return to some form of the gold standard.

Rule 2: Gold does not rise: currencies lose purchasing power against gold. Milton Friedman-the renowned American economist-stated: "Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner, by the depreciating of their circulating currency, through excessive quantity." That is bad news for the U.S., Canada, Britain, the Eurozone and Japan. Their currencies have lost more than 70% of their purchasing power against gold during the past 10 years. When we begin asking: "How many ounces of gold will this cost?" rather than, "How many dollars will this cost?" The shift in perspective is eye-opening.

Gold is a stable economic measure and a reliable standard by which to measure real inflation. Governments manipulate inflation figures to keep the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) artificially low, since the slightest rise can translate into billions of dollars in government-indexed pension payments to the growing number of baby boomer retirees. Today, instead of using a fixed basket of goods that represents a certain standard of living, methods such as substitution, hedonic adjustments (for estimating demand or value) and geometric weighting, are used to understate the CPI.

For instance, John Williams of www.shadowstats.com, calculates the CPI using the original methodology. His figures show that real inflation is already at 8.5% and climbing. Since the CPI has an inverse relationship with Gross Domestic Product (GDP), understating the CPI automatically overstates GDP.

Rule 3: Gold has intrinsic value. Gold has intrinsic value because it is difficult to find, to mine and to refine. In Roman times, an ounce of gold would buy a good suit of clothes; today, the same applies. In his book, "The Golden Constant," Prof. Roy Jastram demonstrated that gold's purchasing power remained remarkably stable between the years of 1560 and 2007.

Rule 4: Gold is a wealth-preserving asset, not a wealth-accumulating asset. We buy and hold gold bullion to preserve wealth. We may speculate in gold stocks, exchange-traded funds, futures and options to increase wealth, but gold bullion ownership best serves the purpose of wealth preservation. This has been the case for thousands of years and will continue to be so unless governments discover a way to produce gold out of thin air, as they do fiat currencies.