I have a lot of respect for Jim Rickards.

Short term, don't know. Longer term, as long as they keep debasing the US dollar, the price of gold in US dollars will go up.

I don't have a big lot of gold and what I do have is in CEF which is half gold half silver (by dollar amount). Oh, I watch prices and read some of the short term predictions but my concern is really maintaining my purchasing power over the longer term. The money I have in gold is money I should not need for many years if ever. Personally, I like silver better than gold from an investment perspective. Gold is more of a currency rather than an investment to me since it has only limited industrial uses. Holding gold is holding cash. I look at like holding a foreign currency. You can't take it to the store and buy groceries but it is easily converted into whatever currency you need to do so.

Hearing people talk about buying gold to make money seems counter intuitive. If a person considers the USD to be a sound currency, then there is no need to hold gold. If a person thinks the USD is and will be loosing value, why would anyone want to buy gold then sell it again for some profit based on the dollar which they think is a poor thing to hold? That seems like a conflict of interest (to me at least) or maybe they are buying gold for what I see as the wrong reasons.

So anyone considering buying gold needs to consider WHY they are buying it. If it is to protect purchasing power of their money, then trading it back in for an inferior money doesn't make sense, unless of course they need the USD to buy something. And if a person is using gold as a short term speculation to make a fast buck so they will have more money to spend next year than this year, good luck with that. I am a horrible trader and gold is a volatile market. No thanks.

Not saying that is your intention because it probably is not. Just pointing these things for anyone reading this.

I just don't do short term with my off farm investments. Farming is my short term speculation and income producing asset. Off farm investments is my retirement money that hopefully I will never need if the farm continues to do well producing income. It is my "rainy day" money should the farm economy go in the toilet. My retirement plans will not have to suffer even if the farming income will not support it.

Long term I see the continued debasement of the USD which means priced in USD gold will be higher - longer term. Gold might not actually go anywhere. It might buy the same amount of clothes, wheat, steel, farm land, or any other hard asset. That is why I hold gold, to maintain purchasing power, not to make a "profit". Most likely the USD will buy less of those things as time goes by. Now if gold were to get into a speculative bubble (not there yet) then there is the potential to actually make a profit on it. When gold gets significantly over priced in terms of what it will purchase in the way of other real assets, it might be time to divest of some gold (cash) and buy the other assets. So to me gold is a currency with no income producing capability but with strong capability of maintaining purchasing power of my money, and at the same time comes with a free call option that might pay off big should the market become a speculative mania. If it gets into a speculative mania I will sell the gold and buy some asset that is hopefully under valued. Might be land, might be stocks, might even be some other currency, will determine that when and if the time arrives.

Since none of us has ever had any other measuring stick to measure value by other than the USD, we tend to always use it as the standard of value. The problems is, when the powers that be are actively debasing its value it isn't much good for that purpose. And as Keynes said, not one in a million people will be able to recognize that fact. Those of us who do recognize it can possibly benefit from recognizing the real value in any currency is the purchasing power it has for the goods we want and need to buy. I personally think gold will maintain that purchasing power better than the USD going forward. It has for the last 11 years. When there comes a time when I think it no longer will, I will hold some other asset or currency.

Long answer when I could have just said "I don't know." LOL

John