Bill Fleckensten Debunks End-Of-Bubble Forecasts

He makes some good points in his article, "How much longer can gold rise?" Mr. Fleckenstein's tongue-in-cheek five-point list of what the gold market'll be like when the bubble tops is more truthful than it may sound.

For the long-gold trade to really become too crowded, certain events will need to occur:

1. Goldman Sachs (GS, news, msgs) will have had "bus tours" to a bunch of mines, like the tours it and other companies have arranged for different industries, particularly technology.


2. The public will have to be involved in a major way, and we'll see ads on Bubblevision encouraging people to buy gold instead of prodding them to sell their jewelry, as is the case these days.


3. Banks will need to find a way to put money into gold -- because no modern mania has ever ended without the banks finding a way to lose money in it.


4. We will most likely need to see a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, and a leveraged buyout or two.


5. Last, BusinessWeek will have to put gold on the cover, telling us how it's the wave of the future, or some variation of that theme.

He's right, particularly about the media exposure. Also, gold will be featured on the regular MSM [SRM for some]. Back in 1981, I bought a 1/10 oz. gold Krugerrand with some of my paper-route money because gold had been mentioned in the regular Canadian media. The line-up was the longest I had seen for a bank or trust company.

So, I can add a sixth item: huge line-ups at gold retailers, particularly banks and trust companies that sell gold, with at least one myopic kid waiting to buy. Those line-ups are noticeable enough to make the non-business media think gold is newsworthy.

[Note: I got this item courtesy of the Free Republic. The post thread's here, with a comment I left. It's #13.]