Gold has been used for thousands of years to store wealth and for trade.

The money in your pocket is called "fiat currency" and is not backed by any real substance.

What gives your dollar or yen or euro or pound value is the implicit backing of the issuing government (or central bank).

The reality is that your paper money is REALLY only worth the paper it is printed on. If trust breaks down in your paper money then it will lose perceived value with stunning speed!

Store your wealth with REAL, HARD ASSETS such as gold, silver or platinum.

Silver has been a great investment for decades but as of mid-2009 the metal has lagged behind gold as an investment when measured in dollars per ounce. As the inflationary effects of the "Obama stimulus" becomes evident in the commodity price explosion to come, silver will shine as an investment whose value, when priced in dollars, will rise quickly to the upside.

This website will hopefully be used to give you an introduction to the real value of precious metals.

Gold and other precious metal stocks took a pounding in the third and fourth quarter of 2008 as the global credit crisis kicked into full gear with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings and the near bankruptcy of AIG.

In early 2009 precious metals have bounced back and are beating most of the market in equities and in some cases bonds as those asset classes have continued to lose ground against simply holding dollars. The dollar, by the way continues along with the Japanese Yen as one of the strongest currencies in the world. The euro continues to be weighed down by the economic turmoil in Eastern Europe.

Dollars, yen and euros can be printed at will by central banks that depend on fractional reserve lending. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium are held by individuals all over the world as a way to store value. People like Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Thomas Wood and Ron Paul have warned for years that reckless spending policies by the U.S. and various European countries would undermine the various fiat currencies. People in ancient cultures such as those in India, China and the Middle East tend not to have established financial systems that they trust like in the West so money is held with gold coins and silver coins.

Money is also traded in the form of jewelry, jewels (precious stones) and "soft" commodities like cattle, grains, vegetables and spices. In the West most money is "stored" and traded in the form of digital information on computer hard drives. The paper cash in your pocket is a small fraction of the actual "money" that trades hands each and every day. Think about it, Do  your groceries, clothes, entertainment and other incidental items measure up to your bi-weekly pay, mortgage and debt payment obligations on a dollar by dollar basis?

Those outlays are usually paid for by check or automatic debit over computer networks. You don't drive down to the mortgage finance office and pay your interest payments with gold coins or coffee beans, right?

Money, as most Americans understand it, is paper and digits. That is how we function in the modern world. That trust has been shaken by the financial crisis that engulfs the world.

Peter Schiff is the President of Euro Pacific Capital of Connecticut.

He has spent the better part of a decade warning Americans that asset values were inflated on a false base of credit expansion. For years he was laughed at and mocked on financial television and very few people heeded his warnings of an impending crisis in the financial markets and in the U.S. Dollar.

No one is laughing at him now.

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Jim Rogers is a soft spoken man from Alabama who, along with George Soros, rose to the top of global finance by taking huge bets that went against the common wisdom of the time. Their Quantuum Fund was one of the best investment funds of all time. It gained 4200% over a period of only ten years.

Recently Jim Rogers has warned anyone who would listen that the Western Financial System is insolvent and will not recover in its current form. The days of financial engineering is over and the only real global economy to rise from the ashes will be one based on world wide agriculture and agricultural and commodity trading.

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Dr. Ron Paul is an American Congressman from Texas. He has spent thirty years in and out of politics as a die hard defender of the American Constitution. He believes that the Federal Government has only one duty; that is to follow to the letter the Constitution and what it instructs for national governance. He is the enemy of bureaucratic bloat and socialistic ideas creeping into American life.

Ron Paul is also a lover of sound money and prudent fiscal policies. Like Schiff and Rogers, Paul believes that the current global credit crisis was caused by a shift away from prudence, sound money, hard assets and delinking the United States dollar from the Gold Standard in 1971 (Bretton Woods).