Quando a compra de ouro se [pode] tornar uma questão de vida ou de morte

Depois de lermos isto ou isto, o cenário que Jeff Clark traça, no Casey Research é, a meu ver, bem crível:

I was recently asked in an interview if I thought gold was going to $5,000 an ounce. “No,” I said bluntly. “I think it’s going higher.”

“You’re that optimistic?”

“No,” I replied. “I’m that pessimistic.”

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It’s doom and gloom to say this, but I think it’s possible and perhaps even probable that at some point we’ll all feel forced to buy gold, almost irrespective of price, due to a sudden and rapid depreciation of the U.S. dollar.

How do we get to that point? Simple: You go to buy something and realize you’ve just been priced out of the market, not because the item is too expensive, but because you suddenly realize the money in your hand no longer has purchasing power. Your reaction to that event is predictable: You feel cornered, maybe even scared, and the urgency to seek an alternative takes over.

This is obviously an inflation scenario, but it’s not exactly a stretch to get there from where we are today. Here’s why.

The following chart tracks the dollar and gold adjusted by the CPI [Índice de Preços ao Consumidor] from 2000 to present. It catches many people off guard, once they realize its implications. Look what’s happened to the greenback in the past 11+ years:

Since the Y2K scare, the dollar has lost an incredible 25% of its purchasing power. Even adding the measly interest one would earn in a traditional savings account doesn’t make up for this loss. This isn’t a picture of the dollar since the creation of the Fed or since Nixon took us off the gold standard. This is what’s happening right now – a gross devaluation of your dollar-based savings. Gold, on the other hand, has not only preserved but increased our purchasing power.

Now, imagine this scenario on fast forward. Instead of a 25% loss in 11 years, what if it occurs in, say, two years? That’s what can happen in a highly inflationary environment. At some point, given the baked-in consequences for our currency and the unwillingness of politicians to effectively deal with the problem, you one day instinctively realize, as you hand money to a cashier to buy milk and she asks for more, that it is a depreciating asset and no longer a stable form of exchange.

In other words, you won’t buy gold at $2,000 an ounce because you think it’s going to $6,000; you’ll buy gold because you fear the dollar will continue losing its ability to meet basic monetary requirements and you’ll need a substitute, something that will retain its value.