Gold

Gold is a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is dense, soft, shiny and the most malleable and ductile pure metal known. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Gold is one of the coinage metals and has served as a symbol of wealth and a store of value throughout history. Gold standards have provided a basis for monetary policies. It also has been linked to a variety of symbolisms and ideologies. A total of 161,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history, as of 2009.

And now gold is valued at $1223 per once.

Up until WWI, gold was worth about $20 per once. In 1934, gold was worth about $35 an once. In 1971 President Richard Nixon ended US dollar convertibility to gold and the central role of gold in world currency systems ended. The dollar and gold floated and in January 1980 the gold price hit a record of $850 per ounce (in inflation adjusted US dollars, the price would have to reach about $2,200 to break the record in real terms). Back in 1980, the world was facing major recessions, debt problems, crisis in the Middle East, a major invasion by the Russians, and the dramatic fall of US power world wide.

As gold surges in value, one has to wonder what has changed over the last several years to drive this surge in the value of gold. The biggest change in US politics was the election of Obama. Could that be the change that is driving the rising value of gold?