I feel an urge to comment on Paul van Eeden’s essay “Making sense of the gold price” (T.N.M., Jan. 14-20/02). I am 80 years of age, having followed the gold and silver markets since the 1950s. Van Eeden’s information is so bulky I can’t handle it. I only know that gold has been a poor investment for a long time.
As a retired steel salesman, I can tell you that steel sales are a great barometer of the U.S. economy.
Van Eeden states: “We probably have about US$8 trillion that has to be wiped out of stock portfolios before we should start looking for the bottom of this bear market.”
I contend that we are at or near the market bottom, because the U.S. government has just reported that steel sales have been improving slightly since October 2001 and huge monthly pension funds are coming up for investment. My experience has been that the economy, as a whole, will start to recover gradually about six months after this happens (maybe a couple more, owing to the incidents of Sept. 11).
Van Eeden mentioned falling U.S. businesses and our unemployment rates, but he failed to tell us how many gold mines were closed and how many workers were subsequently laid off.
I have already started to purchase stocks, but none are in the gold market. Perhaps if van Eeden would purchase some gold stocks, we could compare notes in six months or so.
Warren Niebling
Flourtown, Pa.
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