Over the long term, gold is a lousy bet.
Especially if times got REALLY bad - like 1930s bad -and the gov't seizes your gold again!
At the current prices, gold is already a lousy bet. It's real value was exceeded after gold passed $550. After that point, gold purchasing became purely speculative.
It is out of balance with reality, and will crash hard when the conditions propping it up disappear. Primarily, the Chinese economic expansion. If anything should happen to cause a crash over there, the floor under gold prices will drop out.