New book ‘102 Things to Do with a Hole in the Ground‘ spotlights global reclamation projects
Stories of reinvented coal mining regions, regenerated communities and rebuilt ecosystems are told in a new book published this month.
Felix Salmon, uber-blogger and columnist at Reuters, takes on the Economist’s Matthew Bishop, author of In Gold We Trust?, on gold’s value versus currencies, bonds and stocks.
The rising price of bullion, says Bishop who is in the pro-gold camp, is a canary in the coal mine.
“As the gold price goes up, it tells us we should worry about why it is going up, and it tells you something about the value of paper currencies. And what it tells you is that governments are taking a lot of risk with our currencies right now.”
Bishop says that we shouldn’t be all in gold, but we need to balance risk.
“You shouldn’t be trusting one government, one currency, anymore because there is so much risk attached to it. I think this 10- or 12-year period where gold was out of fashion was an abberation. Gold is something we need in our portfolio.”
Salmon, anti-gold with one foot firmly in the Warren Buffett camp, doesn’t see gold as suitable for investing.
“You say we need gold in our portfolio. It does nothing for me. It is a fixed income investment with a fixed income of zero. You can call it SWAG—silver, wine, art and gold—that have a cost of storing them but have no intrinsic income associated with them that can ever be considered investments let alone need to part of my portfolio.”
Whoever you are cheering for, it is one of the best articulated debates on an old subject. Both sum up the merits of why gold endlessly draws some while it puzzles others.
