Perhaps only those who own and hold gold bullion are really aware of the comfort and peace gold offers in the current market. Some stocks may go up, some investors bought Apple or Google at such and such a price, but gold has always been and always will be gold. The beauty of gold is you don’t have to talk about it. I am in a financial position where I have the opportunity to discuss personal finance on a daily basis. You would be very surprised to learn how many people in the know own gold.

Of course, it makes perfect sense looking at the market. Yesterday stocks closed down on their second biggest daily loss of the year, less than a month after the media was touting eight-month highs in financials stocks and Apple cracked $600. Talk about a volatile market where you can lose a lot of money and little if any gain can be made.

Gold, on the other hand, is the sane and reliable investment in the current environment. It has performed beautifully and reliably in a bull market for eleven years, bringing a return to all investors who were wise enough to buy gold. Currently, gold is vastly undervalued compared to currency because of the trouble coming out of Europe. The Euro has fallen dramatically versus the dollar and the price of gold will reflect that dynamic in about a week’s time.

But besides that, investors want, like, and need the personal security that owning physical gold offers in an upended market. Gold is always valuable, stays with you, and no one needs to know about it or see it. Holding gold yourself is probably the best way to stay sane in the current market.

Gold bullion shines as a currency and store of wealth in the most dire situations because paper currencies and methods of exchange break down. When the world is topsy-turvy business as usual breaks down. While this is not something that one should actively invest in, because such situations are by their very nature completely unpredictable, it has happened several times in recent human history at least.

Most people remember stories of the Second World War and the amazing role gold played in the lives of people migrating throughout the world, Europe specifically. Crossing borders, keeping police at bay, and storing wealth while currencies defaulted and disintegrated were all accomplished with the help of gold bullion.

The reason for this is the inherent value of gold. You cannot change the fact that gold is a valuable substance no matter what is happening in the world and this makes gold one of the best investments to make at any time. We know gold is valuable now and that it will be valuable in the future. That’s why it appreciates.

Right now the USS Enterprise, America’s most renowned aircraft carrier is on its way to the Arabian Gulf, or the Persian Gulf as it is known in the rest of the world. While there has been saber rattling between the West and certain Arabian powers for some time, it does not change the fact that geopolitical instability is still a very serious concern that needs to be considered by all investors.

In the event of a major conflict between Iran and the West, whether that manifests as a simple standoff or as a full-fledged military conflict of some sort, gold will immediately skyrocket in value as a safe-haven asset. This accounts for a portion of the demand in the market. Because gold is relatively sheltered from market activities, many investors prefer to enhance and hedge their portfolio with gold because it will benefit when other investments experience difficulties.

This is the basis for a gold rise on any kind of escalation in the Middle East. Even economic and diplomatic sanctions boost the gold market because they limit other markets and increase volatility.

Exactly how the current conflict in the Middle East will play out cannot be known, but we can know that there is a conflict and that gold bullion is the best way to protect yourself and accumulate your assets at this time.

The only time people seem to be happy with the Federal Reserve these days is when there is a massive injection of money into the markets. We call these programs Quantitative Easing, and despite the official announcement of the third round there are still fundamental problems in the US employment numbers and the housing market.

Perhaps those two areas more than any others are the basis for the US economy, and when we see very little quantifiable growth in these areas, such as is currently the case, we need to evaluate our positions on the economy.

Luckily, whether the economy is good or bad there is an asset available that can store, transfer, and accumulate wealth: gold bullion. Gold has an inherent value that is fundamentally predicated on its scarcity in society. This is why gold has been treasured through the ages in civilizations across the planet. Gold is valued in the most diverse of cultures with absolutely no contact between each other and it is a testament to the inherent value of gold.

In times of troubles, as we have seen recently in countries like Zimbabwe, gold becomes the de facto reserve currency and the only reliable currency of exchange between people. While the currency in Zimbabwe reached hyperinflationary extremes and the central bank began printing multiples of million-dollar notes, the populace ceased using the currency at all, relying instead upon gold that was panned from the African landscape in rivers and streams.

The Federal Reserve is printing money like tomorrow came and went and we have yet to see how it will fully affect the money supply. We know from previous rounds that the money-printing will take years to fully register their effects on our economy and what we have seen so far in terms of recovery is lackluster at best.

Paper currency has always been faulty, and in this economy it is doubly untrustworthy. The wisdom and fundamental strength of gold bullion is what we come to rely on and realize in times like these.

While several optimistic economic reports have bolstered US markets for the past few weeks, there are signs of fraying at the edges in the recovery. Ireland, one of the first countries to contract in the EU and one of the first to be forcefully bailed out, as a mechanism to restart growth, is now showing signs of what is being called a “re-contraction.” The Irish economy is contracting again, despite all the measures taken to boost it up.

This is important news while the price of gold bullion is correcting in the US markets and some economists are even erroneously wondering if there is the beginning of a bear market. If you need clear indications to see that the price of gold bullion will resume its upward bull market trend immediately following the current correction, then the Irish contraction is the best for you to look at.

While we see and hear news coming out of Greece and Germany regarding the lagging lack of economy and bailouts there, the news from Ireland has been very quiet for some time and many market-watchers, workers, and investors may have forgotten that there are trouble points in other European Union countries besides Germany.

For many US investors, there has been fair sailing for about four weeks now, with stocks in the financial sector at eight-month highs. This is partially why the current correction in gold bullion has been so under-reported and so protracted at 13 percent off recent highs. However, the fundamentals of an optimistic market are lacking if you simply look at the news on the horizon. The European Union is not all better and will begin producing negative sentiment in American markets again. It’s a matter of time.

If you consider objectively where the biggest growth in any market has been, you have to acknowledge precious metals, specifically gold, as one of the top performers. Whether Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve intended to benefit the gold market with its market stimulus is beside the point. That has been the effect. There is no recovery in housing, but there has been a surge in gold.

The so-called “safe-haven buying” that may have been lacking in recent weeks will resume again the gold market and gold bullion will again be valued more highly as a fundamentally sound investment in a beleaguered market.

Once again the anti-gold analysts are questioning gold bullion. Currently, only the players on the sidelines who have no positions in gold to lose are tossing in their two cents when it comes to the gold bull market. We are in a correctional phase for gold bullion, though it is very much predicated not on the gold market itself but on the strength and consolidation in other markets, particularly currencies as the third bailout for Greece gets underway.

The market experienced two significant corrections in September and December of 2011, during which time the price of gold corrected at least 10 percent. A decrease in price up to 20 percent is considered technical ground for a correction. Anything over that line would call for an evaluation of the market. Currently, we are seeing prices at 13 percent below highs, placing gold squarely in a typical correctional phase.

However, a couple market analysts who missed the gold wave cannot make it a bear market just by saying so. In September and December, Nouriel Roubini and Dennis Gartman very notably proclaimed that gold had exited bull territory. While Roubini launched his inaccurate attack on Twitter, Gartman actually sold his positions in gold. Of course, following their proclamations, January of 2012 was a great high for precious metals with the US Mint selling out of silver Eagles and experiencing record-breaking demand for gold Eagles. Gartman has since publicly apologized.

And Gartman seems to have learned his lesson. He was quoted on March 9, 2012 as saying, “gold likely to outperform stocks.” Gartman’s fundamental market analysis may be wanting but he certainly learned his lesson on gold.

The bull market is nowhere near over. In real terms, gold is incredibly undervalued at its current price. Mr. Gartman mistakes that for a message about gold instead of a message about the rest of the market. Due to an inflationary market environment, the dollar has less purchasing power. This process is not likely to cease anytime soon. Gold bullion, in this case, will be the best place to preserve and grow capital.

A lot of people take a lot of jabs at the current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and at his administration. It’s fairly understandable. The economic policy of the Fed, despite being a veritable market unto itself, has yielded a “frustratingly slow” recovery in the words of Ben Bernanke himself.

“Helicopter Ben,” as he is sometimes called in alternative media, is the nickname given to the Chairman of the Fed due to his inflationary policy of wanton money printing. All the stimulus programs we have seen, the Quantitative Easing programs, and the debt-monetization amounts to printing money. The Fed has proved it is willing and able to print money.

The image portrayed is one of Ben Bernanke, leaning out of the window of a helicopter and raining money down, which he could do ad infinitum as the Chairman of the Fed. This fits with his image as a moot academic with little to no business savvy or real world experience. In order to buy popularity and acceptance, he is printing money.

All of this may or may not be true. Politically speaking, hopefully the Chairman of the Federal Reserve knows what he’s doing and is fairly immune to attacks on his image. Economically speaking, however, the policy of the central bank is necessarily causing a lot of inflation in the cost of real goods.

Gold bullion is about as tangible of a commodity as you can get. It is, in essence, the most real good available on the market. Therefore, as “Helicopter Ben” continues to print money, and there are indications he is going to print more of it, the price of gold will continue to skyrocket.

Gold production and supply has changed little since the start of this crisis. But the value of the dollar, which is in question, has changed quite a bit and promises to change even more in the future. As the Fed continues printing money, and there is indication they must print more, the price of gold bullion will continue to gain as a real good in a sea of fake paper.

So, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has again tacitly delayed a third round of Quantitative Easing. In an appearance before the Congressional Finance Committee, Bernanke simply didn’t mention it. Markets dived in response, but have since regained ground on very strong jobs data and an agreement in the Greek Parliament on debt.

This really brings up the issue, however, of what happens to the money supply when the government prints money. If you notice, looking at any historical price of gold will make you begin salivating, or exhibiting a similar desirous phenomenon. Look at the gold price three years, two years, one year ago and you’ll start wishing you had bought gold bullion then. Are you up 30 percent? That’s my favorite question for proponents of stocks.

The simple matter of fact is that central bank policy, which includes the programs of Quantitative Easing, is driving the gold price higher through the function of inflation. QE is inflation. Period. In the short term, it has very a important market effect of injecting credit, liquidity, and nominal value. This can make all the difference between a floating market and a severe downturn. Both are bad, but theoretically one is worse. In the sense that QE was intended to provide a short-term injection of liquidity to markets and keep them from a serious downturn, they have been generally successful.

But the rapid increases in the price of gold tell another story. All that QE doesn’t go away. After the effects of the short-term capital wear off, you still have astronomical amounts of dollars in the markets. The more dollars there are in existence, the more dollars it takes to purchase real goods. The most definitive real good we have is gold. The price of gold has skyrocketed with the QE.

Up until 2007, the Federal Reserve held approximately $700 billion of treasury notes on its books. By March 2009, it held over $1.75 trillion of bank debt, treasury notes, and mortgage-backed securities. In March of 2007 the price of gold clocked in at about $650 an ounce. In March of 2009, gold bullion was just under $1,000 an ounce. Today, the price of gold is hovering just under $1,700.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

This would be why the Fed has been buying gold at forty-year highs. Until the Fed begins unwinding QE with definitive moves instead of tacit delays, the price of gold will continue to reflect the effects of monetary stimulus and gold bullion will continue to be the best investment we can make.

A true upholder of gold bullion is one who sits back and waits because he understands that the time will come…

What comes around, goes around. My, oh my, how the tables have been turned on central bankers. Their latest scheme on capitalism is simply not working as they presumed it would. Their astonishing, yet distorted at times, three century execution with supremacy and prosperity was finally brought to an end by the economic crisis of the last few years. The manner by which they preyed upon others in an attempt to enhance their wealth is at its final stage because those accountable can no longer reimburse what they are bound to. No one can change the hard reality that the ones under the obligation have no money and, consequently, their creditors will soon follow in destitution.

The allowances that were conceded to central bankers created monsters who cultivated credit and debt gambled on a leveraged basis of paper money partially sustained by gold which then permitted the West to amass political power and wealth to a cosmic degree across all continents. But, alas, it culminated with the US dollar’s loss of its vital link to gold in 1971 when the toll of preserving a say in all military goings on across the world became more important than the ability of the United States to settle in gold what it was indebted for. Just by looking at the frail condition of the euro we are almost certain that the end is very near. Remember that the euro was initiated in an unsuccessful European effort to contend with the US dollar which was ever more tremulous.

It took only 9 years for gold to catapult from $35 per ounce to $850 subsequent to the US discontinuing the gold convertibility of the US dollar in 1971. This increment of approximately 2,500% in value overshadowed a much smaller rise of 1,400% of the Dow from 777 in 1983 to 11,722 in January 2000. Bankers began getting edgy with the intensifying gold price and were determined to put the lid on it. They saw the truth about their fiat paper money, a truth they could not bear anyone else to recognize.

So began a journey of 40 years to desperately try and cover up the precious metal’s influence on their worthless paper. But not the way one would think. They were too sneaky for that. Their efforts were not really in shrouding real market demand and the gold price, but rather in a more deceptive and fraudulent manner. They overcame gold’s true price by furnishing markets with gold bullion owned by the nations they allegedly worked so hard for. Then came Frank AJ Veneroso who, with his intellectual mindset, uncovered a very important piece of the puzzle. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the majority of gold marketed consisted of central bank gold sales and loans. Veneroso‘s conjecture is that in 1990, 21.5% of gold sold that year surfaced from central bank vaults. The sales had expanded to over 1/3 (34.6%) of all gold sold by 2000.

This is why between 1980 and 2001 the price of gold went down. There were thousands of tons of central bank gold entering the market. Interestingly, the price of gold started going up in 2001 despite all the gold that was fraudulently dumped. The story doesn’t end here, it merely begins. The point is that gold bullion will stand tall in the face of these monsters. Go long.

It really isn’t that surprising that it would be China to be the most influential country on its way to returning to a currency backed by gold bullion. I mean, they have surpassed us in many other areas, too…education, exports, etc. I doubt that the fact that they are worried about the value of their dollar reserves affects the United States in any way, but it should. Nobody wants dollars! They are the real asset that does not gain anything.

Since 1978 (commencement of China’s Reform Era), the Chinese have been exporting more goods than importing which has permitted the country to hoard trillions of dollars. They have so much that it is equal to our complete monetary base totaled before the latest financial predicament. The Chinese have their own way of doing things and whether we agree or not, nobody cares. The process by which they have accumulated so many dollars is that when a Chinese business makes money by selling their goods across the seas, it is stipulated by their government that they give the earnings to the country’s central bank which is the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). They, in turn, receive the Yuan at a fixed rate.

The two countries didn’t trade much at the beginning, for example, in 1980, China’s foreign currency reserves were roughly $2.5 billion. And, now, the amount of foreign currency reserves that are stored by the Chinese government is a whopping $3.2 trillion, translating into a gain of 127,900%.

It is the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) in China that manages those foreign reserves. They are currently in an all out currency feud with the United States. Their purpose, for the moment, is to produce a novel leading world currency and remove the US dollar from its current reserve position. But they have a very big obstacle confronting them which is how to rid themselves of all the dollars they have. So they are purchasing US government securities and, because of this, have now accrued an enormous heap of US government debt. Indeed, about two-thirds of China’s reserves continue to be invested in US Treasury bills, notes, and bonds with the next largest block in the euro. And because of the Fed’s near to zero rates, all this money is essentially earning nothing in terms of interest rates.

In reality, the Chinese are now in a jam with all their US dollars. They are very aware that if they begin selling their US government bonds, it would push their value much lower. Then they experimented with the US stock market and their result was less than worthy with the great amounts of US equities they purchased just before the market commenced its downward spiral at the end of 2007. Morgan Stanley and Blackstone Group were firms in which the Chinese went into at about 10% and they have lost 70% and 46%, respectively. The US stock market is no longer appealing to the Chinese. Inflation is now their only worry and SAFE has made it clear that they will never be a speculator again while their only function from now on will be to guard the security of China’s foreign exchange reserves and guarantee a steady investment profit.

Now that they are not buying stocks and their only apprehension is inflation, how will they hedge that risk? Their answer is to dive into the gold market and take over. And with this action they are on their way to accruing massive amounts of gold that in the near future, they will have enough to re-establish the convertibility of their currency into a precious metal. They were on a silver standard in the early 1900s.

Things were different back then. They weren’t as respected as they are now. They are presently growing at an accelerated speed and are also in possession of the biggest cash reserves in the world. So it only corresponds that they will also have a currency sustained by the safest and most secure asset, gold. China would very much like to be one of the world’s most transcendent nations along with having the greatest currency as their own.

Today’s central banks rely on the printing press which is why China stands out amongst them because their way of achieving greatness will be by backing its currency with something much better than forsaken pledges. The Chinese know the power of gold bullion…do you?

The reason Warren Buffet is opposing gold is the exact reason why a gold bullion believer purchases the 5,000 year-old precious metal…it doesn’t do anything or go anywhere. It’s a sad day when a person like Buffet turns his back on such a wealth preserving asset. One would think a man with his long-term investment record would know better. I mean just look at his transition from investing in private non-financial businesses to being on the side of the establishment and employing his institutional weight to acquire very attractive deals in suspicious banking institutions that the regular citizen would never be capable of. At one point he was representative of the majority and now, regrettably, he is an agent for the super elite.

Why Stocks Beat Gold and Bonds, Buffet’s most recent written communication, published in Fortune, might probably be the one of the most exasperating documents that he has produced yet. Within this document he, being the astute investor that he is known for, appeals to the necessity of preserving one’s purchasing power against widespread state inflationism. Due to the reliance upon the printing press, the US dollar has endured an overwhelming decline of real value since 1965, about 86%, according to Buffet. Along with this, he manifests his dissatisfaction for investments that are currency-sustained and dependent upon unstable fiat money which is hastily inflating. Subsequent to this, he turns on gold justifying rather weakly that purchases are merely illustrating ‘greater fool’ theory, readily anticipating new surges in price that will sponge up new purchasers ceaselessly.

But then he has considered silver in the past which did not go well for him. Maybe he has something against the precious metals because he carelessly states that while gold’s utilities include being industrial and decorative, “if you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own one ounce of gold at its end.” Isn’t that what we’re hoping? I don’t know if anyone else makes sense of that, but I can’t.

He goes on to compare a pile of inert gold and its inability to be matched up against a pile of farmland and Exxon Mobile stock of the same nominal value in terms of productive utility. It’s not even a valid comparison. He should have matched the precious metal up against Treasury bills, or something of the sort. His intent is clear, though, with all his effort in supporting America and its powerful stock market. I believe I heard the national anthem in the background.

But then he probably wouldn’t have had the effect he wanted even with T-bills because their average yield, under the umbrella, dropped to merely 0.9%. If we were to foolishly agree with Buffet about gold being in a bubble, then how would we portray T-bills? Stratton Street and their credit specialists call attention to the more than $10 trillion marketable Treasury securities that were outstanding in January, despite their average yield. We are all aware that US consumer price inflation is outrageously controlled, but we will ignore that, for the moment, and take it for what it’s allegedly worth which is currently 3% year-on-year. Does anyone else see the illogicalness to this? Because he endorses that “bonds should come with a warning label,” but in manifesting such loyalty to T-bills, he does appear to be obsessing over liquidity, yet with no expectation of acquiring a significant return which is why the entire document is not up to par with what gold bullion is capable of nor how important it really is to wealth preservation.