Gold’s relentless ascent may continue – a wonderful investment opportunity stemming from the spreading loss of faith in fiat money. Or the fourfold price rise in seven years may be the result of fearful and naive buyers putting their faith in?a barbarous relic. That faith could eventually be crushed, bringing hefty losses (as happened 31 years ago). These clashing world views were displayed last month in the US Congress. Representative Ron Paul, hard-money advocate and the Tea Party’s “intellectual godfather”, asked Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke whether gold was money. Told “no”, Mr Paul asked why central banks held so much of it then. The answer: “It’s tradition.” That tradition is not dead; the Bank of Korea just made a small purchase of the yellow metal, for example.
一種看法是，金價(jià)的持續(xù)上漲勢(shì)頭會(huì)繼續(xù)——鑒于投資者正普遍喪失對(duì)法幣的信心，這可謂一個(gè)絕佳的投資機(jī)會(huì)。另一種看法是，金價(jià)在過(guò)去7年里翻了兩番，正是因?yàn)槟切┿枫凡话病⑻煺娴馁I(mǎi)家將全部信心都寄托在這種“野蠻的遺跡”上，這種信心終會(huì)被摧毀，帶來(lái)慘重?fù)p失（就像31年前發(fā)生的那樣）。這兩種相互沖突的世界觀，上月也出現(xiàn)在了美國(guó)國(guó)會(huì)上。眾議員羅恩?保羅(Ron Paul)是黃金這種硬通貨的擁護(hù)者，被譽(yù)為茶黨的“精神教父”。他質(zhì)問(wèn)美聯(lián)儲(chǔ)(Fed)主席本?伯南克(Ben Bernanke)黃金是否屬于貨幣。在得到否定的回答后，保羅追問(wèn)道，那為何世界各國(guó)的央行持有如此之多的黃金。伯南克的回答是：“這是傳統(tǒng)。”這個(gè)傳統(tǒng)沒(méi)有消亡；例如，韓國(guó)央行(Bank of Korea)就剛剛購(gòu)入了少量黃金。