You think people in 3rd world countries dont buy gold or silver? You think you cant exchange gold for cash there? Unlike in the US, people in the 3rd world generally have a good idea of the market value of currencies & commodities because they deal with it on a daily basis.
If you give a girl a Gold necklace, she will be very happy with you. If you give her a necklace made out of dollar bills she will probably slap you. Gold is rare and shiny and pretty. Dollar bills are puke green and get your hands dirty. What makes gold more real is the effort it takes to get it out of the ground. A single man can only pull so much of it out of the ground by himself. Its a great indicator of how much a days wages for labor should be worth. What cant you do with gold? You can trade it for any currency in the world which will then buy you anything. It was the trusted currency for all the history of mankind, only in the last 100 years have men been using paper to trade with and only the last 40 years has our paper not been backed by gold or silver. No nation has EVER survived when their currency was not backed by gold or silver. The average life span of fiat money is 20-50 years. We are in year 40. Sometime in our lifetime we will HAVE to go back to gold & silver. Personally I think it will happen in less than 10 years. If we make it out of this crisis which i dont think we will, there will just be a bigger crisis in 2020. In case you havent noticed we have been having these financial meltdowns every 10 years. We had it in 1980, We had it with the S&Ls in 1990, we had it with the dot coms in 2000, and now we have it with housing & financials. Gold is stable, so is silver. The dollar is not. If you make 50k per year in dollars and you saved every penny, you got an invisible tax that stole $1,500-$2k from you. Prices would stay the same if everything was priced in Gold & silver (supply & demand excluded)
The dollar has better exchange value than gold meaning that pretty much wherever you find yourself - be it NY City or outer Mongolia - its easier to get what you want directly with dollars than with gold...."directly" being the operative word here. I'm sure you'll find exceptions but unless I woke up alone on a desert island my currency of choice is still the dollar. You think people in 3rd world countries dont buy gold or silver? You think you cant exchange gold for cash there? Unlike in the US, people in the 3rd world generally have a good idea of the market value of currencies & commodities because they deal with it on a daily basis.
Look at it from another angle, if you were in Haiti, Chile or wherever during and after the earthquake. Those 2 Thousand or so potatoes have a lot more value compared to Gold. Value is merely a perception, which changes with the time. Better not jinx myself; I want Silver to go UP.