Thanks Cliff, I appreciate everything that you wrote. I guess my concern is that gold is not as pervassive in our society as it is in others. India and China although progressive in many ways are not that far removed from a barter type system. Lets say you own an ounce of gold and our entire monetary system collapses.

One would not be holding it in a safety deposit box as institutions will be closed. So you have a security concern and if times are as tough as we portray them to be security of many types will be an issue. But lets say we have a bunker at home to keep it safe, great.

What do you do with this ounce of gold? How do you realize its value? As slug pointed out on SH rich people are accumulating gold. These rich people may have avenues available to them to realize the value of their gold. But for you and me that may not be so simple.

Do we cash in our ounce of gold for devalued currency?

How much gold do you need to buy something when bartering and how to you break an ounce of gold if your grocery bill accounts for only 1/10 of an ounce. India is set up for this, not Canada. Our system is set up to trade gold for debased currency, nothing else.

Most people think inflation is a supply/demand situation involving goods, not the money supply.

My point is that if gold take off it will be because all fiat currencies will have devalued( some small countries have decoupled theselves from the US dollar already and have increased their gold reserves substantially, United arab Emirates is one of them I think as well as Kuwait). So where do we go from there, the Canadian $ will also be devalued. Sell gold or SGR shares we will get devalued curency. And if you think that the Canadian $ has not lost its value come and check out house prices in Winnipeg. No boom happening here but quite the price appreciation year over year; most likely due to a weaker Canadian dollar . Not to the American $ but vs itself. A dollar doesn't buy what it used to.

The price of oil is all relative to the strength of our currencies nothing to do with scarcity just like the 70's. Thats why the value of gold increases with oil, just need more money to buy the same amount of commodity be it gold, oil, or a house.

Cheers