Originally Posted by TheDoc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_as_an_investment

"The gold market is also subject to speculation as other commodities are, especially through the use of futures contracts and derivatives."

"Today, like most commodities, the price of gold is driven by supply and demand as well as speculation."

I understand Gold has value in the Economy... but we aren't some 3rd world country that doesn't have crap for an economy and the majority of trade is done within that local economy, which is often much smaller in population and more localized and able produce the products needed.

Here, most people don't have gold on hand and can't go out and get it. At that most don't have enough gold on hand to pay the mortgage/rent let alone buy food for any amount of time. If the eco crashed, the dollar would crash, the value of goods would sky rocket around the world. Fuel would based on the value of gold, and we don't have enough gold to cover fuel for the supply chain in our Country. Companies would fail overnight, they have no gold to pay for goods to pay for people, at that be able to take the gold. Then the entire stock market that exchanges/trades our goods needing to have gold to actually move those goods or the money value would be just crazy - basically every major company is dead over night. And finally, that's before everyone rushes in and exchanges the gold they do have, which would rip it's value out from under it when you took the 'cash' in exchange.

Unless you have a vault full of gold bars or you're able to go get your own gold from the rivers/mountains.. The gold most of us have is as valuable as the printed money we have. It's an investment and should be treated as such.