Gold Bugs

Here's a nice bit of humour from Scott Adams (the Dilbert cartoonist) from his blog:

It is wonderfully absurd that the best investment option my brilliant friends can think of involves trading their stock ownership of American companies into shiny rocks. While these particular shiny rocks have some practical value, so does manure, and yet you wouldn't trust your fortune to cow poop. The value of gold is derived primarily from the fact that people agree it has value, for a variety of semi-irrational reasons mixed in with a few trivial good ones. What happens to the price of gold if people simply change their minds about its value?

If things go so badly that the S&P 500 becomes permanently worthless, I have a hard time believing that the people who own gold will rule the world. I think it's more likely that the people who own steel that is conveniently shaped like guns will control everything, including all of the shiny rocks. At that point, the new currency will be something along the lines of "Wash my car and I won't shoot you in the leg."

If you feel you need investment advice from a cartoonist, go read the whole post.