If only more people could see and feel monetary gold ....

4:35p ET Sunday, September 13, 2009

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

GATA's friend Bob Lambourne in Britain points out an interesting slide show of photographs taken at the Baird & Co. gold refinery in London and posted yesterday at the British Broadcasting Co.'s Internet site:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8250772.stm

The slide show is a sort of metaphor for the trend of the gold market at large, the conversion of gold jewelry into monetary gold and the remonetization of gold generally amid international monetary debasement. For years this has been the main objective of GATA and other gold partisans (except, perhaps, for the industry's nominal trade association, the World Gold Council, which still seems more attached to the jewelry end of the business, hanging out more, as the council's people do, with lovely fashion models).

As compelling as monetary gold is theoretically and philosophically, even those who invest in gold for monetary purposes are missing something terribly important if they don't have the opportunity to see it. After all, a fashion model may look smashing quite without a gold necklace or bracelet. But gold's appeal as money is far more than philosophical; it is, of course, intrinsic.

This was impressed upon your secretary/treasurer eight years ago at the New Orleans Investment Conference when Mark Wellesley-Wood, then chairman of Durban Roodeport Deep, now DRD Gold, donated to GATA, on behalf of the company, 30 1-ounce Krugerrands for the organization to sell at a substantial premium for fund raising. Gold was then at about $300 per ounce and GATA sold the coins for $525 each. (Presumably their purchasers are as happy now about having bought the coins as GATA was happy to sell them to raise the money needed to stay in business.)

Your secretary/treasurer then had to carry and sometimes hide the coins securely for a few days until he could get them home and ship them out to their buyers, one by one. The heft and beauty of the metal were both exhilarating and frightening, something never to be forgotten.

Two years ago the American Museum of Natural History in New York staged a gold exhibition, much of which involved monetary gold, including monetary gold recovered from shipwrecks:

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/gold/

The exhibition moved on to New Orleans during the investment conference there that year:

http://www.gata.org/node/5641

So, living near New York and attending the New Orleans conference, your secretary/treasurer got to visit the exhibition three times and study some of its stuff. It was spectacular, awe-inspiring even.

Of course the advocates of gold's enduring monetary function do not worship the metal. Beautiful as it is, we are not idolaters; our ideals are a bit higher than that -- personal liberty, limited and transparent government, fair dealing among individuals and nations, and free markets. But it may be good to get out of monetary theory, philosophy, and politics once in a while and be reminded of why the ages picked the precious metals for money and not seashells, chestnuts, or oxen.

Gold has qualities even more remarkable than its beauty. It is not only supremely malleable and ductile, but once it gets into the hands of central banks, commodity exchanges, and exchange-traded funds, it simultaneously multiplies itself to infinity and becomes invisible. Science has not yet figured this out but it is likely to be discussed by GATA and our friends at the New Orleans conference next month. There's still time to register for the conference here:

http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Custom.aspx?cid=21&e=a65db79c-b415-4b...

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

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http://www.gata.org/node/16