Financial Sense On Devaluation, Gold Holding

There wasn't much about where gold's going in this week's Financial Sense Newshour podcast, in part because there was a special on the possibility of the state of California going bankrupt. [.mp3 file]. In the third segment [.mp3 file] was a roundtable interview with Axel Merk and William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The point was made that, although it's formally impossible for the U.S. dollar to be devalued, debasement serves the same function.

Afterwards was an interview with Jonathan Potts, managing director of gold-storing outfit FideliTrade. Amongst other points, he said that it's a better idea to take delivery of a large amount of gold in coin or small-bar form because the bigger bars have to be assayed when they're brought back in for resale. (The assaying requirement is a downside of the otherwise-cheapest option of buying a futures contract and taking delivery.)