Of course the Gold Price is manipulated, that’s the point!

Throughout history, there have been a constant flow of schemes to try to manipulate the gold price and gold itself in terms of paper money. These have come from governments, institutions as well as from individuals. The aim has always been to either establish the value of currencies or enhance that value in terms of gold. The first key to this is to ensure that the gold price is made in the paper currency and not the price of the paper currency in gold.
At school you probably read the book called the Alchemist, where villains tried to invent formulae where they could transform lead to gold. While what they managed to do was a good confidence trick, they could not replicate gold. Today the process continues, but now the boldness of government has gone as far as to say that paper money is better than gold in terms of its value. But gold is gold and for the prudent and those wanting to preserve their wealth over the long term, nothing can replace it.
Experiments using fiat currencies have been carried out since the days of distant Chinese dynasties in attempts to emulate or replace the real money of gold. The reason is simple and explained in a quote I borrow from Mr. Popescu, ‘Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, was mentioning fiat money 2,400 years ago when he said, ‘In effect, there is nothing inherently wrong with fiat money, provided we get perfect authority and godlike intelligence for kings.’ But we can’t, which is why in history, there has never been a ‘money’ that can retain its value or replace gold as real money, in all seasons weathered by economies.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 4 September 2014.