Um, I dunno, sculpin. I guess my brain's not working today. Maybe the more people talk up the price of gold, the less the market believes it?

Hey, I concur that gold is a good hedge against the collapsing US dollar. I feel a chill down my spine whenever I touch anything US denominated. I'm Canadian, but still have some money in USD investments: but only because I want good ETFs to invest in, so all I really own are global-based ETFs (MOO, SEA, BRF) that happen to be denominated in USD, but which should make money based on global growth. (Especially MOO and SEA, which represent industries that have been depressed til recently - buy low sell high, and don't fight demographic trends.)

But from the perspective of my Canadian currency (which is resource-based, so that colours my view), gold is a dead story. Gold did have a great upside when it was at $350; I just don't see any more than a 20% upside now, and I never try to chase the last 20% of an uptrend. The end of an uptrend has higher volatility and more risk; I can make better than 20%, with less risk, pretty much anywhere else. Many base metals still have more than a 20% upside: go look at molybdenum, for example. (That's my obligatory plug for CVE:CBS.)

Still, I can't see how any magic wand in existence can drop gold below $800, so I'm still happy with gold miners. In fact, there's more upside in miners than there is in the mineral itself, I think. As long as they can mine for $500/oz or less, they'll be prosperous.

So, I'm sorry sculpin, my answer's probably useless to you.