Item: It's believed the "price of gold" has been held artificially low for several years.

But what does that mean?

Doesn't it mean "the value of the dollar and other currencies has been held artificially high"?

The answer seems to be, "Maybe." :) Maybe the real point was to drive small mining operations out of business. Or maybe the point was to trick the central banks into over-extending themselves in some way, so they'd eventually fall-down go-boom. I don't know.

If national currencies go back on the gold standard, it could possibly mean an abrupt rise in dollar-value of gold holdings.

However, does it really result in a rise of purchasing power with those dollars? If gold were the absolute, and dollars were the relative, the non-absolute, how's it all work out?

If you went out today and bought (let's say) a bar of gold using current-value dollars, dollars that are not backed by gold themselves - and then tomorrow we had new dollars that are tied to the value of your gold bar - does the actual value of your gold bar go up?

Maybe not. How do you measure the value of a thing that on Tuesday was not "the standard by which value is measured" but by Thursday becomes that standard?

Hobie go lie down now... :)