【英语生活】政府不能印黄金

You probably think gold is in a bubble. After all, it hit new highs in dollars, pounds and euros this week – and has pretty much quintupled since its lows of 2001.

What's more, everyone from Germany to China is still nuts for it. Earlier in the week, this newspaper reported that the Germans have been snapping up coins and gold bars faster than they did even in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers' collapse. In the UAE, you can buy bars direct from a vending machine. At Harrods, you can pick up a variety of gold coins over the counter. And – as the gold bears are keen to point out – you can see ads for the purchase of gold all over TV.

But look at the actual price of gold and it is hard to see real evidence of a bubble. Gold may have hit new highs in nominal terms, but it hasn't come close to hitting its old highs in real terms. Adjust the 1980 high of $850 for US inflation and you get a price of around $2,400 – a level only the most bullish are predicting even now.

Then look to the last few years. The bears would have you believe that the gold price has somehow gone “parabolic”. But, in fact, the price in US dollars has only risen around 25 per cent in the last two years.

Compare that with, say, shares in Rockhopper Exploration, the lucky owner of the prospects where oil was struck off the Falklands the week before last. Its shares started the month at around 40p and have since more than quadrupled. But no-one is shouting “bubble!”. Far from it. Instead, they are all claiming the company has seen a transformational event, which makes its shares worth more than they are even now (which arguably they are).

But hasn't there been a transformational global event that has changed the case for gold, too?

Back when gold's bull run kicked off, there were precious few gold bugs and we tended to make the case for the metal based on likely demand for “bling” from the new middle classes of emerging markets. We only mentioned in passing the fast rising US national debt and the nagging fear that fiat currencies might not be all they were cracked up to be.

Today, however, gold has reverted to its historical role as the global currency of the last resort. You no longer buy it because you think the Chinese and Russians are likely to up their consumption of gold- plated mobile phones. You buy it because you think there is a chance that governments, caught in a debt trap from which there is no honourable escape, will eventually think they have no choice but to print their way out of it. And the risk of hyperinflation is a transformational event for gold – it being the only global currency that can't be printed on the whim of a central bank.

All that said, there is a strong chance that we might see a short-term fall- off in the gold price.

Why? Partly because high prices are putting off India's jewellery buyers. Partly because there is likely to be a short hiatus in new investor buyers coming to the market – if you haven't panicked yet, you will need a new crisis before you do so. But mostly because, after the mini-inflation scare following the ECB's bailout plans for Europe, we seem to be having a deflation scare. Prices may be stubbornly rising in the UK but Spain is now in outright deflation (exclude energy and food, and prices are falling) and core inflation across Europe and the US is very low.

The endless money- printing across the world has not yet brought us proper inflation simply because the mechanism for passing it on isn't working very well: the banks are too busy repairing their balance sheets to lend it out. But there is nothing like deflation to bring on hyperinflation: governments desperate to prop up prices and economies, despite being broke, print reams of money – money that eventually enters the market in a rush, flipping deflation to inflation.

If you can get a copy of Adam Ferguson's 1975 book When Money Dies (soon to be republished), you will find an excellent account of how this happened in the Weimar Republic. It might not happen again but, at this point, it would surely be foolhardy to discount it entirely.

Finally, a word on the ads for gold on TV. There is much muttering about them being a sign of the top. But that is to misunderstand the direction of the flow. ?The ads aren't selling gold to willing punters. They are persuading them to sell their gold at a discount to the spot rate. That's a very different thing – more suggestive of awareness of gold beginning to enter the public mind than of a bubble. Either way, I'd ignore the ads. If you have gold, you should hang on to it. If you haven't, you should use the pull-back in price to get some.

I've written here before about the Blackrock Gold & General Fund and gold ETFs but another fund that might be worth holding is Junior Mining, which specialises in smaller mining companies.

Merryn Somerset Webb is editor-in-chief of Money Week. The views expressed are personal. merryn@ft.com

你或许认为金价已出现泡沫。毕竟，以美元、英镑和欧元计价的金价上周均已创出历史新高——而且自2001年低点以来几乎上涨了4倍。

此外，从德国到中国，大家都仍在狂热地追捧黄金。上周早些时候，英国《金融时报》报道，德国人近期在抢购金币和金条，速度甚至快于雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破产后的情形。在阿联酋，你可以直接从一台自动贩卖机购买金条。在伦敦哈罗斯百货商店(Harrods)，你可以在柜台买到各种各样的金币。而且正如看空黄金的人热切指出的那样，你可以在电视上到处看到购买黄金的广告。

但是，从黄金的实际价格看，很难发现泡沫的真正证据。按名义价格计算，黄金可能创下历史新高，但是按实际价格计算，它远未接近历史高点。黄金在1980年创下的850美元的历史高点，经美国通胀水平调整后，相当于今天的2400美元左右——即使现在，这也只是最看涨的人才会预测的点位。

再看一下过去这几年。看空黄金的人希望让你相信，金价已呈现某种形式的“抛物线上涨”。但实际上，以美元计价的金价在过去两年的涨幅仅为25%左右。

例如，可以将金价与洛克霍普勘探公司(Rockhopper Exploration)的股价加以比较。该公司是福克兰群岛(Falklands)海域最近勘探到石油的区块的幸运拥有者。该公司股价自月初（40便士左右）以来上涨了4倍以上，但没有人叫喊“有泡沫了！”相反，他们全都声称，该公司发生了转变局面的大事，这令其股票的价值甚至高于目前的股价（可以说确实如此）。

但是，转变局面的全球大事，不是也改变了购买黄金的根本理由吗？

回到黄金牛市开始阶段，那时很少有追捧黄金的“金甲虫”，我们倾向于将投资黄金的理由，建立在新兴市场新生的中产阶级对金首饰的可能需求之上。我们只是顺便提到美国国债的快速增长和挥之不去的担忧：法定货币可能并非想象的那么牢靠。

然而，现在，黄金已经恢复了作为最后可以依赖的全球货币的历史角色。你购买黄金，不再是因为你认为中国人和俄罗斯人可能增加镀金手机的消费，而是因为你认为，债务缠身、无法体面脱身的各国政府，最终可能会认为除了加印钞票以外别无选择。恶性通胀的风险对黄金是一件转变全局的大事，因为黄金是央行唯一不能随心所欲印刷的全球货币。

话说回来，金价在短期很有可能下跌。

原因何在？部分是因为金价高企抑制了印度珠宝买家的需求。还有一部分是因为新投资者买家的进场可能出现短暂停顿——如果你还没有恐慌的话，你将需要一场新的危机。但最主要的原因是，在欧洲央行(ECB)纾困欧洲的计划引起小小的通胀担忧后，我们似乎产生了通缩担忧。英国的物价可能在持续上升，但西班牙目前陷入了完全的通缩状态（不包括能源和食品的价格指数持续下降），而且欧洲各国和美国的核心通胀率都非常低。

全球各国无休止地印钞，迄今并未为我们带来适度的通胀，因为传导机制没有奏效：银行忙于修复自己的资产负债表，而不愿发放贷款。但没有比通缩更能引发恶性通胀的了：尽管已经破产，但竭力推升价格和经济的各国政府，仍付诸于大量印制钞票——钞票潮水般涌入市场，最终使通缩一下子转化为通胀。

如果你能够看一看亚当?弗格森(Adam Ferguson)1975年出版的《当货币死亡》(When Money Dies)（很快就会再版），你就会发现书中清楚地阐述了这种情形在魏玛共和国是如何发生的。或许这种情况不会再次发生，但是目前完全漠视它肯定是鲁莽的。

最后，说一下电视上的黄金广告。许多人说这是见顶的迹象。但这是误解了流动方向。这些广告并非是向有意愿的买家销售黄金。它们意在说服人们在现货价基础上打折卖掉黄金。这是截然不同的事情——这与其说是泡沫，还不如说表明黄金开始进入公众意识。不管是哪一种情况，我都会忽略这些广告。如果你有黄金，就应该继续持有它。如果你没有，就应该利用价格回调之际买上一些。

我以前在本栏目谈到过BlackRock Gold & General Fund和黄金的交易所交易基金(ETF)，但另一只可能值得持有的基金是Junior Mining——该基金专注于较小的矿业公司。

本文作者是《MoneyWeek》主编

本文仅代表个人观点，来信寄至merryn@ft.com

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