LETTERS TO THE EDITOR — Gold more valuable than public perceives (January 11, 1999)

It is my belief that the role of gold has been greatly misunderstood, especially in recent years. Most people believe it is a relic of times gone by and is useful only in electrical applications and jewelry.

In fact, it is the only real money. All other forms of money, including the exalted U.S. dollar, are just somebody else’s debt passed on. Gold is also something else — the best insurance there is. When things get bad, gold only gets better.

Here is a case in point: A year or so ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. broadcast a small report on a man vending hot dogs in Tokyo’s financial district. Only a few years before, the man was a multi-millionaire working inside one of the buildings behind him. As the economic situation in Japan worsened, he was cleaned out. If he had invested even 15% of his worth in gold, he wouldn’t have been in that situation.

As more and more Generation Xers move into investing and financial institutions, fewer and fewer of them have experienced recession or inflation. They think all they need to do is wait out the downturn and things will get better. But that isn’t always the case.

People insure everything from their CD collections to their family pet, but very few insure their life savings or investment portfolios. It’s as simple as keeping 15-20% in sound gold producers.

I think the reason people don’t invest in gold is that they don’t understand and nobody tells them. Why can’t major producers and bodies like the World Gold Council sell themselves through advertising like the big funds or diamond companies? De Beer’s has no qualms about suggesting spending one month’s salary on an engagement ring, whose diamond is, for all practical purposes except diamond drilling, useless. Big funds have no problem selling their managers as family-oriented team players who are virtually guaranteed to make you wealthy over time.

So what is it with people in the gold industry? We all know how good this stuff is, but it’s almost as if we don’t want the public to find out. I think that if this industry put a little effort into selling itself, the results would be amazing. A good thing has been kept secret long enough.

Bill Dohr

Dryden, Ont.