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Are
We Living in Bizarro World?
By
Paul M. Airasian, Editor, Goldinstitute.net
May
30, 2007
Superman fought many villains to
protect “truth, justice, and the American way.” One of the most
memorable was Bizarro, a crude copy of Superman who came from a
cube-shaped planet that was a backwards version of Earth. In the
Bizarro World, it was a crime to do anything well or make anything
perfect, ugliness was considered beautiful, alarm clocks dictated
when to go to bed…
Wake up; we’re living in Bizarro World.
Today, many of our society’s most basic notions of good and bad
seem backwards.
* Debt is good.
* Consumer savings is a threat.
* Entrepreneurs are suspect.
* The Federal Reserve is the savior of our economy.
* Selling off our national workforce is good.
* Politicians take credit for “creating jobs” in the private
sector.
* Business owners sell their businesses to investment groups that
have no experience in owning or operating the business. They in turn
load it with debt, dilute the leadership, package it as a success,
and sell it at grossly inflated values.
* The CEOs of companies that lose billions of dollars in a quarter
are compensated tens of millions of dollars for their
“leadership.”
Maybe this is summed up in a song lyric, “Clowns to the left of
me, jokers to the right…”
In any case, welcome to Bizarro World.
This is a world where “change” is hailed as progress, even when
it throws our values into reverse and we go backwards. So, even if a
future monetary crisis seems like a wake-up call to you, don’t
expect the “mess media” to report that we allowed the backward
reasoning of supposedly forward-thinking politicians to implement
policies that weakened our economy and our nation’s independence.
In such a topsy-turvy world, though, it is encouraging to know that
gold is still reliable, enduring, “real” money.
But how can you explain the reality of gold to a gold-agnostic in
this age of the bizarro? I’d suggest the 4
A’s of gold:
Asset – Gold is, in and of itself, a
precious asset. It is rare, enduring, and not dependent on the
performance of people, policies and politics. One analyst called it,
“the North Star of asset values that all other assets revolve
around.”
Abstraction – Gold is appealing in an
abstract sense. For example, it signifies the best in jewelry. Like
fine art, it has an intrinsic value that goes beyond most material
things. “Good as gold” is not just a metaphor; it is a universal
belief.
Allure – If you went to Wall Street
and left a gold coin on one side of the sidewalk and a regular coin
on the other side, I’m sure you’d find that even gold-averse
stock brokers would decide to pick up the gold coin first. It has an
historical allure that is instinctive.
Anxiety – Throughout history, people
have invested more heavily in gold when there was serious
uncertainty about the financial, political, and cultural
underpinnings of society. Anxiety is widespread now, so it’s no
wonder that we have been in a gold bull market the past few years.
It gives me no joy to predict the obvious: the anxiety we feel about
the threats to our economy and way of life will only increase for
the foreseeable future.
There is no Superman to save us from ourselves. If we are to return
to “truth, justice, and the American way,” we have to accept
that “the real world” must be based on real things.
Gold is an important part of that real world and gold will be an
important key to securing a brighter future.
Frankly, it is bizarre to think otherwise.
Paul M. Airasian is founder
and editor of GoldInstitute.net.
He has researched and evaluated gold exploration and mining
companies as an investor and investment advisor for over
twenty-five years. He is an independent consultant on precious
metals investments, and manages investments for the Belmont Group
LLC http://www.belmontgroupllc.com/
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