Bloomberg declares Goldbug vindication

For years, gold bugs were relegated to the fringes of financial markets. Often viewed by mainstream investors as tinfoil-hat conspiracists with basements full of beans and bottled water, their warnings sounded apocalyptic: a coming collapse in financial assets, widespread devaluation of paper money and global disasters that erode civil liberties.

Welcome to 2020.

As the coronavirus brings economies around the world to a standstill, gold is rivaling Treasuries and the dollar as the best-performing major asset this year. The metal proved its haven status with a 6% rally as almost $16 trillion was wiped off global stock markets and oil plunged.

There’s also been a scramble for physical metal as investors in exchange-traded funds build the biggest stockpile in history and dealers say they’re struggling to find gold to sell.
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There’s echoes of many of the typical gold bug predictions in today’s crisis. Besides the obvious economic and financial-market upheaval, social interaction has become taboo and in some places soldiers are telling people not to leave their homes.

Even the so-called paper market for gold is showing cracks and a squeeze last month on New York’s Comex, the largest gold futures exchange, added fuel to another of the prophecies: that when the crisis came, there wouldn’t be enough gold to go around.
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Bank of America Corp. raised its 18-month gold-price target to $3,000 an ounce -- more than 50% above the existing price record -- in a report titled “The Fed can’t print gold.”
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lefty said:

I am a conspiracy theorist with a basement full of dry beans and bottled water. Hate to see folks in general investing in shiny!

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“It seems we’re all gold bugs now,” announces the op-ed piece in the New York Times. It says that gold is “one of the best performing assets in the world this year.” Of gold, the Times writes: “Its price just topped $2,000 an ounce for the first time.” It concludes by warning that unless “central banks stop printing money frantically and real interest rates start rising again, it is difficult not to be a gold bug now.”
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