[Jason_b]

In your mind you may have been hoarding, and are using the word in a neutral sense, but I dislike the word when used by the politicians. It is a politicized word the left uses to incite resentment among the masses against those who tend to prepare early.

Certainly if a snowstorm is on the way, people go out and stock up on groceries. Those to the shelves first get goods, and those who show up after the goods are gone are out of luck. That's unfair say those who got there last. Those first to the goods are denounced as hoarders. Those who sold precious plywood for high prices after hurricane Andrew were denounced as gougers. With an almost infinite demand and limited supply what is expected? For those with plywood to just give it away to the first number of customers that show up? Prices are essential to determine not just who gets plywood, but how much. A person buying plywood at artificially low government controlled prices will buy more than he needs depriving another of getting any plywood at all.

The same can happen when there's a financial storm on the horizon. Those who see it coming first or don't believe that it will just blow over this time dump dollars for gold. Then by the time banks start to fail, or almost as bad, the value of the currency is destroyed by inflation, everyone who goes last to buy gold is resentful that the price is high.

But there is not enough gold in the world to make everyone happy at every moment at a price everyone is happy with.

Not to mention protecting his family and his purchasing power, a gold buyer is exercising his right to own and dispose of his own private property and should be able to do so in peace in this land, without police state interference, regardless of economic conditions.

Yet the same hypocritical people mad about the gold prices and envious of the gold "hoarders" had no issues about hoarding Worldcom stock when they believed it would just go up and up forever providing limitless profits. They were disappointed when it turned out to be a bubble. Some gold owners were disappointed when their gold turned out to be in a bubble in 1980. Anything can have a bubble, tulip bulbs, stocks, gold. Responsible adult people should just take their lumps if they enter a bubble market and guess wrong and lose. Instead, the scam market losers are now suing the wall street brokers. What a disgusting dissipation of energies that might better have gone to producing real wealth for the nation.

The biggest enemy of private property in this nation, and the greatest friend of socialist redistribution is the envy of small minded individuals.

[Jason_b]

A clarification. The people I refer to as being mad about the gold price in the sixth paragraph are those who would be mad if they realized that they now want to buy gold after recognizing that the US dollar is a poor long-term store of value, but that someone had earlier gotten it first for a much lower price, and is selling only for much higher prices.