A wonderful talk by Robert Landis to the Association of Mining Analysts has been posted on-line. Landis gives a comparison between the “commodity paradigm” which holds that gold has been demonetized simply because governments decided that it is not money and is now a commodity like soy beans or wheat. As governments figure out how to get rid of their unnecessary gold over the next five to ten years, it will eventually become completely marginalized. This story is wrong from top to bottom as Landis shows. “Gold is permanent, natural money. Politicians can no more demonetize it than King Canute could order out the tide....Demand for gold is principally monetary. Unlike other commodities, it is produced for accumulation, not consumption.” The “commodity paradigm” was an attempt to provide intellectual cover for the US government’s shameful default on its gold redemption obliations.
