黄金热降温后的末日生存者

    如果光彩耀眼的黄金再也不足以抵御金融灾难，情况会怎样呢？

    美联储实施量化宽松之初，黄金是主要的受益者，原因是投资者纷纷设法防范可能出现的通货膨胀。随后，黄金价格开始持续稳步下跌。2008年12月首轮量化宽松期间，金价为每盎司837.50美元（5167.38元人民币）。长时间的上涨造成金价过高，2011年9月黄金价格在1922美元（11858.74元人民币）见顶。当然，这最终形成了依赖性陷阱——到今年4月份金价下跌了30%，部分原因是人们担心量化宽松行将结束。目前，黄金价格约为每盎司1371美元（8459.07元人民币），六个月来下滑了20%。

    量化宽松只是金价上涨的原因之一。由于人们广泛认为局势不明朗时黄金有保值作用，金融危机以来一直存在的不安全感和灾难迫近感推动了金价上涨。反过来讲，金价呈下降趋势时人们必然普遍认为情况已经开始恢复正常。

    对一小部分投资者来说，情况恢复正常让他们陷入了另一种惶恐状态。忧心忡忡的主流群体把黄金视为针对短期不稳定局面的套期保值手段，在过去五年中则出现了一系列新的观点，认为黄金可以防范我们所知的整个金融体系的全面崩溃。受此影响，人们建立了大量黄金仓位，特别是在美国。这种观点的最出名的支持者可能就是福克斯新闻频道（Fox News）前主持人格伦•贝克。他一直警告说，美联储通过量化宽松等措施为经济注入流动性并增加货币供应量后，恶性通胀、犯罪以及食品价格上涨引发的不稳定局面将不可避免。

    从2008年开始，贝克就几乎一刻不停地将美国货币政策和魏玛共和国等灾难性事件进行类比。无论是本来就有关联还是因此结缘，贝克碰巧得到了金币销售公司Goldline的大力资助（之前在福克斯新闻频道以及如今在他的互联网公司都是如此）。阴谋论者亚历克斯•琼斯也是黄金的狂热信徒，他的影响力只比贝克小一点儿，而资助琼斯的公司是Midas Resources……至于这家公司从事的业务，大家自己去猜吧。

    尽管从很多角度来说格伦•贝克和亚历克斯•琼斯都是边缘人物，但他们都拥有大批拥趸。他们对黄金的狂热属于同一种思维模式，而这种思维模式覆盖了一些真正有影响力的群体，比如以罗恩•保罗为首的美国共和党自由派，以及甚至更为强大的茶党团体。坦帕湾茶党成员诺曼•希罗说：“现在还没想到美国金融系统将要崩溃的人对我们的债务以及政府无力控制成本的事实都视而不见。这已经不再是会不会的问题，而是什么时候发生的问题。”有了这种想法，无论市场走势如何，黄金看来都是一个相当好的投资对象。

    长期以来，黄金一直被称为“上帝的货币”。这也在一定程度上表明，这些黄金狂热者相信，在非常极端、但仍然可以想象的情况下，黄金就是他们的救生筏。五年来，这种观点在大部分时间里都浅显易懂——灾难预言者也许会见到他们所说的巨大灾害，而且还可能从中获利。他们可以看着黄金的美元价格节节攀升，同时对黄金在一个缺少法制的野蛮世界里的价值深信不疑。在他们看来，本•伯南克的货币政策正在为这样一个世界打下基础。

    但最近六个月，情况变得更为复杂——各种各样的黄金狂热者都蒙受了损失，其中最信赖黄金的那些人现在不得不看着自己所持黄金的美元价值大幅下跌，同时还要坚持认为覆盖整个美国经济的真正崩溃即将到来，而且这会让他们成为笑到最后的人。这种情况告诉我们，无论黄金的价值有多大，它依然和当前人们的经济体系紧密交织在一起，而且一直持有黄金会产生机会成本。

    What happens when gold may no longer glitter enough to stave off the financial apocalypse?

    The precious metal, a big beneficiary at quantitative easing's outset as investors sought a hedge against possible inflation, has been steadily declining. During the first round of QE in December 2008, the price of gold was $837.50 an ounce. The precious metal's longer term run-up kicked into overdrive, with the price peaking in September 2011 at $1,922. Of course, this ultimately represented a dependency trap -- in April the price dropped 30%, in part on fears that QE would be coming to an end. Today, gold sits at around $1,371, a 20% drop in six months.

    QE was only one contributing factor to gold's run-up. Broadly perceived as a safe store of value in uncertain times, gold benefited from the sense of instability and looming disaster that has persisted since the financial crisis. Inversely, gold's downward trend has corresponded with a tentative but broad-based sense that things are inching back to normalcy.

    For one small group of investors, this return to normal places them in a new, confounding position. While a worried mainstream saw gold as a hedge against short-term instability, the past five years have seen huge exposure, particularly in America, for a set of ideas that sees gold as a protection against the total collapse of the financial system as we know it. Probably the most well-known proponent of this viewpoint is former Fox News personality Glenn Beck, who has persistently warned of the inevitability of hyperinflation, lawlessness, and bread riots in the wake of QE and other Fed initiatives to inject liquidity and expand the money supply.

    Starting in 2008 and with little respite since, Beck has kept up a drumbeat of parallels between American monetary policy and disaster scenarios such as Weimar Germany. Whether by correlation or causation, Beck also happens to be heavily sponsored (both in his Fox News days and now in his internet enterprise) by Goldline, a company selling gold coins. Alex Jones, a goldbug and conspiracy theorist only slightly less influential than Beck, is sponsored by Midas Resources Inc., which ... well, guess.

    Though Glenn Beck and Alex Jones are in many ways fringe figures, they have significant followings, and their goldbug ideas are part of an even larger pattern of thought that encompasses genuinely influential groups including Ron Paul's Libertarian wing of the U.S. Republican Party, and the even more powerful Tea Party faction. "Anyone who is not looking at a financial collapse of the United States right now is not looking at our debt and the inability of our government to rein in costs. It's no longer a case of if, but a case of when," says Norman Cillo, a member of the Tampa Bay Tea Party. With that scenario in mind, gold looks like a pretty good bet, no matter what the market is doing.

    Gold's longtime nickname, "God's Money," captures some of the faith these goldbugs put in the yellow stuff as a life raft for the most extreme, yet imaginable, scenarios. For most of the last five years, this has been an easy enough proposition -- doomsayers could have their apocalypse and profit from it too, watching gold prices rise in dollar terms while also being confident in the commodity's value in the lawless, feral world they think Ben Bernanke's monetary policy is laying the groundwork for.

    For the last six months, though, things have been more complicated -- while goldbugs of all sorts have taken a haircut, the most extreme true believers now have to watch the value of their gold in dollar terms collapse, while sticking with the idea that the real collapse will be that of the entire U.S. economy in the near future, after which they'll have the last laugh. It's a reminder that gold, whatever its transcendent value, remains entwined in a very human economic system in the here and now, and that holding on to rocks has an opportunity cost.