Americans hated it when the Federal Reserve handed trillions of dollars to crooked Wall Street banks following the 2008 Financial Crisis. Politicians were confronted about the merits of central banking and bailouts.
For the first time in history, college students were chanting “End the Fed” at campaign rallies as Ron Paul took the central bank to task during his presidential campaigns.
Virtually everyone in America vehemently opposed the central bank handing piles of cash to the same bankers whose greed and fraud had caused the Financial Crisis.
Little has changed, but the public’s revulsion taught them an important lesson. If they give handouts to greedy and fraudulent bankers, they had better do it in secret.
Avoiding a public outcry is probably why there is

The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig famously referred to gold as a “Pet Rock” in 2015. He was blasted by people who understand that gold is no passing fad, and it serves some very important roles in an investment portfolio.
The valuable roles played by gold have been well covered here. It’s a hedge against both inflation and deflation, it represents true diversification for portfolios stuffed with conventional securities, and it is a way of protecting wealth during tumultuous times.
But Jason Zweig, Warren Buffett and other notable gold critics who complain about the metal “just sitting there” fail to understand the flaw in their basic assertion.
What they believe to be a potent argument against gold is, itself, one of its great attributes. An asset which can