"One Nation Under Gold" author James Ledbetter writes in the Los Angeles Times today that the wealthier people are, the less likely they are to own gold, and that gold is best regarded as an investment by people who can't afford it. Ledbetter observes that Americans still own a lot of gold even as nobody is sure how much.
Indeed, his essay is most interesting for acknowledging the fog that continues to surround gold.
Ledbetter writes: "While we may think that we live in a more accountable era, our lack of knowledge about gold ownership suggests otherwise. Back when all major currencies were tied to gold, there were economic (and, arguably, national security) reasons to be vague about how much metal resided where. Yet even after a half-century of a floating currency in this country, a legacy of secrecy still surrounds the metal.
"One price of this information void is conspiratorial thinking. Some of the conservative and libertarian figures who demand that the Federal Reserve be audited, for example, grumble that there may be a lot less gold -- maybe none! -- in Fort Knox than official numbers allow. Perhaps that lacuna does only minimal damage to the body politic, but it's hard to think of any good purpose that is served by perpetuating our ignorance about gold."
Ledbetter doesn't realize that the "information void" with gold is maintained precisely because all major currencies really still are tied to gold, or at least to gold price suppression by governments and central banks, because, since gold remains money, the gold price is always the reciprocal of the price of government currencies. Thus gold remains a "national security" issue for any country that values government power over free markets.
Ledbetter could write a book on that subject as well, starting with the documentation GATA has summarized here:
http://www.gata.org/node/14839
His essay in the L.A. Times is headlined "How Much Gold Do Americans Own?" and it's posted here:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-le...unt-20170622...
