Gyroscopic Investing

Like most people on this forum I am not a gold bug. Point in fact of the four assets in the PP and taking a long term view, gold is my least favorite. Nor am I a fan of conspiracy theories. But these two articles are not from your typical tin foil hat sources. While certainly conservative (British newspapers are much more openly slanted in their news coverage than ours are), the Telegraph has never to my knowledge given any credence to the manipulation theories expounded by your more die hard gold bugs. There is also an interesting video in the 2nd linked article indicating that the idea of bank manipulation of gold prices may be gaining ground among more mainstream investing professionals. In recent months I have seen some other non-gold bug players hint that they too have suspicions.

I am making no judgments, but it does raise some interesting questions when this sort of theory starts moving out of the fringe.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/th ... own-price/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/th ... han-libor/

As an addendum to my initial post I will add that the first linked article is an examination of Gordon Brown's famous sale of Britain's gold reserves while the second seems more of your standard indictment of fiat money. The video linked therein is of greater interest to me.

Reminds me of one of my favorite Harry Browne anecdotes:

Although we'll never know, I suspect that more money has been lost with inside information than gained. Many times in my investment career, someone has told me about information that came from a special source — none of which ever proved to be worth anything.

My favorite example was the head of the precious metals department at a "Big 3" Swiss bank, who guaranteed to a friend of mine in 1970 that gold would never go above $40. Asked how he could be so sure, he said, "Because we control the market."


Here's a link to a discussion we had a while back about what can happen when someone tries to manipulate the markets.

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... ic.php?t=5

I enjoyed reading the story that MT attached to the first post.