Treating Gold As Alternate Currency

David Taggart, "The Macro Trader," is a bit of an oddity: a deflationist who's also long gold. His reasoning is fairly straightforward: Europeans are buying gold, as well as U.S. dollars, to get out of Euros. That makes gold a competitive alternate store of value to Euros - an alternate currency.

Right now the situation in Europe is pretty bad. The EU is essentially in complete disarray as new problems seem to surface every couple of weeks. Everyone but the EU knew that the PIIGS had problems but now Hungary, Belgium, and even France are coming up in the news as problem areas. We are seeing currency issues, debt issues, liquidity issues, structural issues, etc. The EU right now is like the Lindsay Lohan of regimes with all of its issues. All of this adds up to what is the largest fear, a sovereign default. If this were to happen, or when it happens, we will see some major turmoil across all markets.

Since his article concentrates upon bullish gold charts in three European currencies, his reasoning's a bit thin but his emphasis is pretty plain. Gold is competitive with fiat currencies now.


Another brief commentary from Frank Holmes features a chart that compares gold's rise in four major currencies since January of 1999: far and away, gold has gained the most in terms of the British pound (believe it or not.) He notes that disenchantment with fiat currencies is encouraging ordinary people to get into gold.