‘We’re All Gold Bugs Now’

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

“It seems we’re all gold bugs now,” announces the op-ed piece in the New York Times. It says that gold is “one of the best performing assets in the world this year.” Of gold, the Times writes: “Its price just topped $2,000 an ounce for the first time.” It concludes by warning that unless “central banks stop printing money frantically and real interest rates start rising again, it is difficult not to be a gold bug now.”

Welcome to the fight, we say. It’s nice to see our esteemed colleagues acknowledge the monetary issue, even if they do so with typical condescension. The phrase “gold bug,” after all, is marked in the Sun’s “Reporter’s Handbook and Manual of Style” as a pejorative. The Times’ definition of gold bugs as “investors perpetually bullish on gold” is crosswise with our view; we’re not perpetually bullish on gold and don’t invest in it.

Then again also, too, the Sun’s style guide defines gold as the basis of monetary value. So, the Sun discourages its scribes writing about monetary matters from using in respect of gold the word “price.” This is how the Sun’s manual puts it: “Please avoid referring to the price of gold. The Sun prefers to refer to the value of the dollar.” What the Times is talking about is not a rise in the price of gold but a collapse in the value of the dollar.

Anyhow, we are glad to see them enter this discussion, even if they had to bring a banker, Ruchir Sharma, from Morgan Stanley into the op-ed page to do it. When it comes to monetary reform, the Times’ editorial column has been so often scooped by the Review & Outlook column in the Wall Street Journal that its house scribes might just be gun shy. Morgan Stanley certainly put the hay down where us mules can get to it.

It’s appreciated, given the scantness of the comment in the leading papers. For the collapse of the dollar this past week to below a 2,000th of an ounce of gold strikes us as a major moment, one that was once nigh unimaginable to those who came of age during Bretton Woods, when the dollar was defined as a 35th of an ounce of gold. We were amazed at how little comment greeted the dollar falling to below a 1,000th of an ounce of gold.

No doubt the scantness of comment owes to the absence of leadership on this head. Between the pandemic of Covid-19 and the compulsion about making sure the stock market stays aloft, and the pending election, our leaders in government and the press have stared at the signals gold is sending like deer in the headlights. Or they have looked away entirely, mocking the idea that the classical monetary metal is even capable of sending a signal.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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