Gold Torched Over At The Business Insider

The post itself is neutral, dealing with the drop below US$1,100, but it serves as the backdrop for some gold skeptics to pick on the goldbugs. I haven't been reading the BI's gold posts long enough to get a solid sense of what's normal in the comments section, but it seems that the gold-bashers are getting bolder. Contrarians may be interested in this datum.

A piece by Kishori Krishnan, webbed at Gold Investing News, is actually pessimistic in tone. The goldbug case rates only a passing mention.


Here's a gold-bull post that's laced with a conspiracy theory popular in the gold world: the gold bull market is deliberately hobbled by active suppression of its price. Ironically, this fellow's on the right side of the contrarian wind by saying it's an "Excellent Opportunity To Buy Gold."

In the gold world, conspiracy theories often serve as a faith-substitute. A cynical lot, goldbugs can't resort to the usual mantras found in the regular stock market. They can't urge themselves and others to stay the course by saying "it's undervalued," "stocks always go up," "don't bet against Uncle Sam," etc. They can't even come up with their own boosterisms because, by their own admission, gold can be nothing more than a savings device or a speculation. And, of course, their entire case is built upon the assumption that the U.S. economy is headed for a gigantic reckoning due to the distortive effects of government (primarily monetary) intervention.

So how can they come up with a slogan to match, say, "you can never go wrong, long term, by buying a stake in U.S. productivity"? You can never go wrong, long-term, by betting on governmental stupidity? It's too oppositional - the kind of stance that provides a fertile soil for, yes, conspiracy theories. After all, stupid people should be easy to play off against...