Gold, Baby

By Paul Kedrosky · August 9, 2011 · ·

From Reuters as the gold frenzy (literally) hits new highs, this high-gloss take on the precious metal’s recent history:

0809 POST 1 Gold1

Related posts:

  1. The Case for Pricing Gold in Gold
  2. The Gold Bullion Bubble
  3. Who Knew That to Get Cash For Gold You Had to Send Gold?
  4. Gold Graphs, We’ve Got Gold Graphs
  5. The Dow in Gold: Pricing Yo-yos in Meerkats?

Comments

  1. anon says:
    August 9, 2011 at 8:08 am

    I'd like to see percentage moves of the y-axis, not dollars

    • Paul Kedrosky says:
      August 9, 2011 at 8:33 am

      Yeah, it's best seen as figurative. And you don't want percentages –you want a log y-axis.

      • anon says:
        August 9, 2011 at 1:30 pm

        Granted. In the end, to me, the only way to know if gold is over/under valued is to compare what it could buy historically with what it can buy now. Unfortunately, few items are comparable across 100 or 1000 years, but I suggest the following: hours of unskilled peasant/farmer/construction work, sq.ft. of land in central area of large city, farmland, barrels of good wine, beer, livestock, tomatoes…, copper, etc.

  2. BL_ says:
    August 9, 2011 at 10:16 am

    If only there were some more enduring financial instrument whose value didn't undergo such wild inflationary swings…

  3. guest says:
    August 10, 2011 at 6:05 am

    if the riots had continued in London, one would have been unable to access the safe-deposit box holding one's gold and nowhere would have been open to exchange it.. that's assuming the rioters would have allowed you to pass through them without their taking everything..

    just a thought

  4. Brandstad says:
    August 10, 2011 at 10:57 am

    I would love to see a chart for the same time frame comparing the price of a cow to the price of gold. No one can argue that the "value" of a cow in 1900 vs 2010 is much different!