stocks 》gold
Those who regularly preach doom because of government budget deficits (as I regularly did myself for many
years) might note that our country’s national debt has increased roughly 400-fold during the last of my 77-year periods.
That’s 40,000%! Suppose you had foreseen this increase and panicked at the prospect of runaway deficits and a
worthless currency. To “protect” yourself, you might have eschewed stocks and opted instead to buy 31⁄4 ounces of
gold with your $114.75.
And what would that supposed protection have delivered? You would now have an asset worth about $4,200,
less than 1% of what would have been realized from a simple unmanaged investment in American business. The
magical metal was no match for the American mettle.