黄金热降温后的末日生存者

    即使影响没有那么直接，投资者仍然可以从这些局外人的想法中得到一些启发——最极端的黄金狂热者的顽固态度和灾难预言是解析黄金本身的一个机会。任何一个交易日的黄金市价都包括非常小的一部分工业价值和大量心理溢价——这让黄金在不稳定时期具有终极保值作用的理论成为现实。宏观投资研究机构Orcam Financial Group创始人卡伦•罗奇认为：“金价显然包含溢价，因为人们总是将它视为法定货币体系的替代品。”

    但就像艾伦•麦迪逊敏锐指出的那样，和格伦•贝克等人及其信众的想法相比，就连这种观点都算不上永恒。麦迪逊说：“在他们看来，黄金永远具有贸易功能。五百年前具有这种功能的盐，但突然就变成了黄金。鲸油或许也有这种功能，因为人们曾用它来产生动力。”麦迪逊不能断定如果真的出现经济崩溃，黄金是否还会有价值。

    “这比其他任何事物都更难以捉摸。”（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie  

    Even if they're not all that directly influential, investors can gain insight from these outsider ideologies -- the rigidity and doomsaying of the most extreme goldbugs is an opportunity for reflection on gold itself. The market price of gold on any given day is made up of a very small slice of industrial value combined with a huge helping of psychological premium -- the self-fulfilling prophecy that gold is the ultimate secure storehouse of value in uncertain times. According to Cullen Roche of the Orcam Financial Group, "There's an explicit premium built into the price of gold because it's always seen as an alternative to the fiat money system."

    But, as Preppers' Alan Madison is quick to point out, even that's not nearly as timeless as the likes of Glenn Beck and his attentive followers would like to think. "Gold, in their mind, is eternally useful as a trade item," he says. "Five hundred years ago it was salt, and suddenly it became gold. Or Whale blubber -- once that was used as a power source." Madison's not sure that gold's value would hold in the case of a real economic catastrophe.

    "It's more mythological than anything else."