“Inflation has been ongoing. A dollar is worth about 1/7 of what it was when I was kid.”
Which is why I began buying small amounts of gold and silver as far back as High School. Even then, I understood. Some may argue that gold has not done as well over the long term as stocks, but at least it won’t evaporate like intangible assets.
“This is probably the only thing I like about gold. It keeps the Federal Reserve from counterfeiting. Which, BTW, is what ‘Quantitative Easing’ is.”
I don’t understand your point how gold has prevented the Fed from counterfeiting — they have been doing that for quite some time, and gold hasn’t stopped them. Rather, I see gold as my personal protection against the inflationary effects of counterfeiting by the Fed.
If you are on a gold standard, then one dollar equals x milligrams of gold; the amount of dollars you can print is limited by the amount of gold in reserve. You can’t counterfeit, you can only debase the currency.
Since this is not the case, the Federal Reserve can counterfeit as many dollars as they want - these days they don’t even need to print them!
The situation reminds me of “Making Money” by Terry Pratchett, except that Pratchett seemed to like fiat money over gold. (I could see holes in the scheme big enough drive CVNs through; it was fitting that the “hero” was a former con man.)