[bildung]

> Gold has not lost any value in the last century by comparison.

Not in that artificial timeframe, but surly in many other periods:

* it lost over 65% of its value between 1933 and 1970.

* it lost over 82% of its value between 1980 and 2000.

* it lost about 29% of its value the last two years.

(http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-y...)

Gold is a highly speculative asset.

[icebraining]

Well, that's the price of gold in USD. Saying that gold has "lost" or "gained" value only works if you hold USD as the frame of reference.

Alternatively, you could invert the graph to say that USD is a highly speculative asset - relative to gold :)

[lmm]

You can't eat gold. I'd be more interested to see their value measured in loaves of bread, apartments, or hours of human labour - the kind of thing I'm actually going to want to buy with my store of value.

[bildung]

I see where you are coming from, but as these numbers are inflation adjusted the USD isn't really the frame of reference, the purchasing power is - as a result of adjusting for inflation the purchasing power represented by one USD stays constant, so USD can be cancelled out on both sides of the equation.

[RockyMcNuts]

not if the dollar is more stable than gold vs. a broad basket of consumer and other traded goods and services.