Gold, Hard Money, and Financial Gurus

Gold is one of the world's oldest and most stable repositories of wealth. For centuries, it was the basis of monetary systems; today, those who advocate a monetary gold standard (or gold investments as a way to protect assests from inflation) are often known as "gold bugs." Many gold bugs are deeply suspicious about government control of money; they note that governments can create spending or cause inflation, but they cannot create gold at will. Freely circulating gold is thus a check on monetary authorities and this creates intense controversies about the monetary role of gold and its relationship to political and economic power. President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended the free circulation of gold coins in 1933. President Richard Nixon in 1971 ended the convertibility of U.S. dollars to gold, thus ending a de facto gold standard in favor of a system of floating monetary exchange note. The financial newsletter industry provides a colorful and spirited alternative to the mainstream financial press. It is an industry full of selftaught mavericks some wellorganized and wellcapitalized, and others producing little more than kitchen table pasteup jobs. Often treated like a black sheep cousin by power brokers on Wall Street, newsletter writers are an important counterpoint to conventional opinion, and often a powerful source of investment insights. Financial Writers and Gurus is the story of the alternative financial press, with some thoughts and guidelines about what to expect form a newsletter advisor, how to separate the wheat from the overabundant chaff and how to find the right advisor for you.