Seriously? You think that the time in between a dollar collapse and "new world dollars" will be 5 minutes? Such a scenario would entail panic across every financial market in the world. Gold will be the only thing with a clear value. And if you end up with 500 new world dollars in the end, that will likely be 500 more new world dollars than you would have had you held dollars.
Gold is not a break even trade when winning. What on earth? Seriously? Gold is a store of wealth, it is accepted in exchange for any currency (practically). It appreciates and depreciates at different speeds against the major currencies. Please, do some research on this before going off like this about break even trades.
Both points very good stated, PlusMinus. But if we get a world currency after a "panic across every financial market in the world", what says that gold would withstand this panic? Wouldn't it be possible that gold, after such a panic, just lost all it's worth.
forgive me for butting in. gold value is in the difficulty in forging it. it is a finite resource and thus ideal for currency. people understand its rare so they know it is scarce and due to the weight it cannot be replicated. when all other currencies lose value the properties of gold withstand their demise as a result of this. the fact that something can be used for exchange is a value in itself.
I brought this up in the last gold thread. Gold has absolutely zilch for intrinsic value. It's soft, yellow metal - nothing more. If there's going to be such worldwide chaos and panic, people will want food and shelter, your useless gold won't be worth shit. This seems to be too much for the gold bulls to wrap their minds around.
Again, gold went parabolic several years during the seventies yet no nuclear holocaust happened. The suggestion all gold bugs accumulate gold to prepare for the end of times is just as ridiculous as the idea of gold really being of any help in case of a true apocalyptic outcome of the crisis of today. The keyword here is capital preservation.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2257237&highlight=worthless#post2257237 said the same thing in jan 09, gold was at 830
Say you have a billion USD and you buy 100 million$ worth of gold. I wouldnt say such a move has all of it's roots in greed really. Also, in a world where it's hard to find anything that hasnt doubled this last year versus the USD gold's performance is still laging so the accusation of greed being behind the rise and atractivness in gold can be debated as well. Fanny and Freddie, AIG, C and other worthless crap quadrupling in a few months time despite still being bankrupt... Now that's speculation!