07.20.11
Buy gold — the fiat money kook scam
The current goldbuggism is succinctly explained here under the title, Fools Gold: The Glenn Beck Goldline Scheme.
Beck’s not the only who pimps gold but he was by far the most powerful and influential player. And Fox gave him an audience, one so large it could effectively move the price of gold. The blog post explains that the goldbug market is sufficiently small — around 25,000 or so — that advertising and Beck’s daily exhortations were enough to do the job.
The accompanying graphic explains how Beck worked it for the betterment of the goldsellers as well as himself.
If one was to buy gold, the correct way was to buy bullion or accepted gold bullion coins. This is not, however, what Beck advocated. He recommended French franc Roosters and other European numismatic coins. The graphic accompanying the blog makes it quite clear.
The difference is critical to the investor, or the person about to be ripped off.
Gold bullion is compensated for sale at melt value and that is typically one to five percent less than what you would pay for the gold. This is how the sellers make their money. For you to break even on the investment the price of gold must then appreciate.
And that is the spread dealers work. However, it gets more profitable if the goldseller peddles gold numismatic coins, like those recommended by Beck. They lose their value immediately on purchase.
The graphic states bluntly: “Customer loses 42 percent of their investment instantly.”
Beck is gone from Fox but the gold commercials are not. And as anyone who watches cable news knows, many other gold sellers have entered the advertising fray. It’s not just Goldline International.
Goldline, the blog post also notes, is being investigated for criminal practices.
The current GOP is thoroughly infested with gold bugs/fiat money kooks. Paul Ryan is fond of flaunting his Zimbabwe hyperinflation note — another item Beck used to regularly frighten his audiences into buying gold.
Tea Party wingnut and candidate for the Bethlehem school board, Randy Toman — also sometimes a subject of the blog — is crazy for fringe precious metals investment newsletters and is on record going on about the collapse of the dollar. Toman is a good example of someone completely taken in by gold scams and the belief in runaway hyperinflation.
There’s this, too:
The examples are virtually without end.
I even spotted noted quack Jim Cramer advocating for gold while being laundered through MSNBC. Paradoxically, this was said to be because the US government was unstable and the GOP was looking ever more likely to push the country into default in August.