Adrian Ash: Gold and the end of history's holiday

9p ET Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Adrian Ash, London financial correspondent for The Daily Reckoning, contributor to MoneyWeek magazine, editor of Gold News, and head of research at BullionVault, has another wonderful essay at Gold Seek, "Gold and the End of History's Holiday." It pokes fun at the arrogance of our betters in finance who for years now have considered gold fit only for the inhabitants of primitive countries with unreliable currencies.

Of course the West now has just sophisicated itself out of any chance at solvency, while the supposedly primitive people of Asia scurry about doing actual work, saving more than they spend, and, to a growing extent, saving in gold. Few of those looked upon by the financial sophisticates of the West as little buggers know how to spell "derivative" or "collateralized debt obligation," even as many of those financial sophisticates wish they'd never heard of the damned things.

Ash's essay isn't quite perfect. He mistakes Keynes' famous phrase "barbarous relic" as scorn for gold itself when it was, as GoldMoney's James Turk often has noted, scorn for the gold standard. But when the financial sophisticates of the West are through, even the barbarous relic of the gold standard may look pretty good.

After all, the West has been through this nonsense once before and simply chooses to forget, even as other "relics" are still all around us -- like Cole Porter's remembrance of sound money, written in post-devaluation 1934 and still sung everywhere if without understanding:

You're the top.
You're an Arrow collar.
You're the top.
You're a Coolidge dollar.

You can find Ash's essay at GoldSeek here:

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1191950232.php

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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