The Value of Gold

“Unlike paper currency, coins or other assets, gold has maintained its value throughout the ages.”

Jill Kerby, personal finance expert and Mark O’Byrne, Research Director of GoldCore were interviewed by Sinead Desmond of ‘Ireland AM’ on TV3 this morning about the “value of gold” as a store of wealth and financial insurance in our “electronic age”.

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The ‘What’, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of owning physical gold were discussed and a range of gold bullion coins and bars displayed.

Jill Kerby made the important point that paper and electronic money today has no real value in and of itself due to separation of them from the original sources of money – gold and silver:

“Digital money now is taking the place of what we used to use, not that long ago, people actually had real silver and real gold and we have paper money that generally represented how much gold and silver we had, just a hundred years ago.

But the problem now of course is the seperation between that real money and the paper and ink stuff that we have and the electronic money we have today and as a result what you could buy a hundreds of years ago with a dollar bill or a pound note … Mark what is it, 90%? 

There has been massive depreciation and devaluation of money over time.

The depreciation has continued and the big danger now is that central banks don’t want us to have gold, they hold onto it but they do not want us using real money or even holding onto real money because it undermines their desire to keep inflating or depreciating the real value or the spending value of money.

I think we are moving to a cashless society as well. There are pros and cons with that. Lot of pros and a lot of people think it is a good idea and certainly  central banks do. The problem is that what it means is that you won’t even have the paper money to be able to take it out of the bank when they start with negative interest rates which is what we are moving towards as everyone knows.

Anyone with savings are getting no return and one of the criticisms of gold for many many years, calling it a “barbarous relic” is because it had no yield didn’t give you an annual interest rate or a reward for hanging onto it but that’s kind of true except that it never really lost its intrinsic value. Now cash is not returning a yield, there is no return of the money in the bank which is why …. people at home …”

To Listen to or Watch the Interview Click Here

Gold and Silver Bullion – News and Commentary

Gold subdued on likelihood of Fed rate hike (Reuters)

Gold prices fall in Asia as stronger dollar, Fed rate views weigh (Investing)

As Yuan Sinks, Goldman Flags Scope for Gold Demand in China (Bloomberg)</