Gold and Blackball

"You just sit there in your office. A scholarship here, no scholarship there. He goes. He stays. Who in the hell gave you that power?"
--Stefen Djordjevic (All the Right Moves)

Previously we noted the media's general avoidance of Ron Paul's presidential campaign despite his success. Peter Schiff does similar here while pulling in this laughable article from Barron's profiling Ron Paul's home run investments in gold.

The article seems to want to discredit RP's investment success. At times the article's tone paints Paul as reckless (portfolio full of gold stocks that would be a 'financial planner's nightmare), negative or unpatriotic (portfolio constitutes a 'massive bearish bet on the economy'), or, and it's hard to write this without LOL, wrong (RP has been predicting 'disastrous inflation' since Nixon closed the gold window in '71--plus gold might still go down and hammer his portfolio).

Sheer child-like thought process...

The other implied message, as Schiff notes, is that Ron Paul's investment positions imply that he his using his political position to do things to tank the economy and push gold higher. We've actually discussed media claims like this before--that there is a conflict of interest between Paul's investments and his job as a Congressman.

An ounce of reasoning dismisses these claims as misguided (or worse). Investments in gold are bets on disorder (monetary, social, etc). Disorder has been increasing and gold prices have been rising in kind. Ron Paul's voting record demonstrates that he has consistently opposed the policy trends enacted as disorder has increased.

More suspicious would be politicians who happen to be long lots of gold while favoring the stimulus programs, bank bailouts, Federal Reserve easy money policy, et al that continue to be rolled out. It would be reasonable to conclude that such people were front running their own policies that are bringing the system down.

Instead, Ron Paul is fading (read: going against) his investment positions. He is trying to make the system better, while preparing for the worst.

position in gold