TUNE IN TO GLENN BECK'S Fox News show or his syndicated radio program, and you'll soon learn about the precarious state of the US dollar, a currency on the verge of collapse due to runaway government spending, a ballooning national debt, and imminent Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation. To defend yourself against the coming financial holocaust, Beck explained on his radio show last November, you need to "think like a German Jew in 1934, maybe 1931." And that means thinking about buying some gold.
Conveniently, Beck made that suggestion as he was in the midst of interviewing his own "gold guy," Mark Albarian, the president and CEO of Goldline International, a Santa Monica, California-based precious metals company that is a major sponsor of Beck's radio and cable shows. In a seamless intertwining of anxiety and entrepreneurship, the two amicably debated whether we've already hit "peak gold" or whether the price of gold, then at $1,100 an ounce, might yet hit the inflation-adjusted high of $2,200 it saw back in 1980. Beck speculated that gold could go as high as $2,500 an ounce:
"I think people are running out of options on what, you know, could be worth something at all."
For more than a century, gold has held a special allure for conservatives. Amid economic downswings and social upheaval, the precious metal has come to be seen as a moral and political statement as much as an investment. Ever since the late 19th century, when the gold standard became the center of a ferocious debate about the country's financial future, gold has been mythologized as a bulwark against inflation, federal meddling, and the corrosive effects of progressivism. (See "Goldbug Variations," below.) In the late 1970s, South African Krugerrands became a refuge from soaring interest rates and oil prices. In the '90s, militia groups fearful of big banks and the Federal Reserve hoarded gold.
And now, with the economy limping along and a black Democrat in the White House, gold mania has gone mainstream. Gold prices hit a recent high last December and remained strong as the European debt crisis unfolded this spring. John Paulson, the hedge-fund giant who made billions bundling and betting against Goldman Sachs subprime mortgage securities, has invested heavily in gold, even starting a new fund devoted solely to it.
A recent New York Times poll found that 1 in 20 self-identified Tea Party members had bought gold in the past year.
