KittySlayer
Grandmaster
Time to print more money!
The paper they use to print money doesn't just grow on trees.
Time to print more money!
The paper they use to print money doesn't just grow on trees.
Thought money was printed on cotton
Other commodities, land and collectibles are also valid investments to consider. The reason that the statement "has never been worth zero" is important is because fiat currencies have a nasty tendency to eventually end there and get replaced. No one, including Mike is claiming that gold and other precious metals don't rise/fall in price over over the short term. All investments do.
By your over-simple argument, investing in the S&P 500 after it went down ~55% in 2008 was a bad idea despite the fact it is worth 3x that now. If you don't want to invest in PMs, that is perfectly okay. It isn't for everyone and even most PM proponents only recommend it be part (5-10%) of your portfolio.
The vast majority of dollars are electronic bits now.
Those are some bizarre conclusions you have come to.
Now, if you judge the price of gold vs. the dollar from 1971 onward when you are actually allowed to purchase gold as a commodity and their values weren't linked, you come up with a very different picture than you have been painting.
In rising from $35/oz in 1971 to the current (as of this writing) $1176/oz in 2015, gold has increased in value by an average of 8.3%/year. The includes all rises and falls in value over that period.
You are free to avoid owning gold and other precious metals. Feel free to hold dollars that the Fed has openly stated they plan to devalue each year via inflation. Feel free to purchase land, stocks, bonds or whatever investments you prefer. But why you find it important to misrepresent gold's value is puzzling.
PS- As for stores of value, the dollar is pretty much a champion of fail. Using the 1933-2011 dates you used above, the dollar lost 94% of it's value due to inflation. Even using the more recent 1971-2015 dates, the dollar has lost 80% of its value. In both cases, gold has more than held its own in real purchasing power.
Oh, they want it really bad. Several European countries already have it. Japan started NIRP about a month ago. It would change a lot of things.