Gold is not an investment in the normal context, but rather an insurance policy against the potential destruction of a currency. It is interesting to compare it to today's darlings, the cryptocurrencies.

Gold has to be securely stored, while crypto is just a number written on a piece of paper (or tattooed on your scalp). That said, gold is reasonably compact, but can be easily found if you try to transport it across borders.

On the other hand, gold can easily be sold "anywhere", but buying a hamburger with crypto may not be easy. Gold is a physical item, while crypto is a religious belief.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I see nothing wrong with keeping a small portion (say, one or two percent) of one's wealth in gold. If everything else goes to hell in a handbasket, you may find that percentage increases all on its own.

Despite the occasional doubts of the sanity of the guys running the show, the results of thee US government defaulting on its debt would be so proportionately horrible as to act as a deterrent to all but the mentally deranged.

Jeff