Catching up on in-box items I missed, I just had the chance to read the funny New York Times article on investment gold bugs: “Believing (and Believing and Believing) in Bullion.” It’s a charming piece of reporting that does no harm to the sector of the investment community that is devoted to gold as a investment. It is of interest to the Austrian community because: 1) many of these investment advisers are steeped in the writings of Mises and Rothbard, and consider themselves to be dedicated libertarians, and 2) there will always and forever be a confusion concerning the conceptual distinction between advocating a gold standard as a path to monetary reform and suggesting gold ownership as an lucrative investment vehicle. Fortunately for the theorists, the viability of the reform path is not bound up with the predictive power of the financial practitioners.
Goldbugism: Theory and Practice
