Gold: The Original, Now Considered Alternative

For roughly 5,000 years, gold was money. Not "alternative money." Not a commodity. Not an asset class. Money. The kind you held in your hand and exchanged for things of actual worth.

Then, in 1971, we were sold a different story.

The dollar, President Nixon announced, would no longer be backed by gold. It would be backed by something called "the full faith and credit of the United States." Which is to say, the story itself.

And we bought it. All of us. Hook, line, and sinker.

We didn't have much of a choice, really. The story was already in progress when most of us arrived. You were born into dollars. You were paid in dollars. The mortgage was in dollars. There was no opt-out button.

We went to work every day — for dollars. We saved — in dollars. We built our retirements around dollars. We bought houses, raised children, planned our futures…all denominated in a currency backed by nothing more than a collective agreement to keep pretending.

It is, when you think about it, a remarkable thing to have pulled off.

And now, 55 years into the experiment, the original — gold, the money that built every civilization from Egypt to Rome to the British Empire — is considered the fringe position.

We don't know how this story ends. Nobody does, really. But stories built on nothing tend to have interesting third acts.

Stay tuned.