by Koos Jansen
Bullion Star
An often-perceived analysis in the gold community is that gold is the constant in our global economy. But is this true? Yes and no. Allow me to share my observations. Although gold has an exceptionally constant nature, and we have yet to see another currency that can compete with gold’s constant nature, the reality is, that there is no exact constant in economics. In any market all goods, assets, currencies, etc. continuously fluctuate in value relative to each other due to ever changing supply and demand dynamics. Having said that, in this post we’ll examine gold’s constant nature by measuring its purchasing power in the short (weeks) medium (years) and long term (decades). Additionally, we’ll compare our findings to fiat’s nature.
We will find that when gold is officially recognized as the center of a monetary system – throughout history there have been several forms of gold standards – gold is approximately constant in the short, medium and long term. Since the gold standard has been abandoned, the metal has become less constant in the short and medium term, but has remained impressively constant in the long term.