The Gold Religion

Via Ritholtz, Josh Brown discusses gold as an article of faith:

I've been happy to be constructive on the gold trade so long as that gorgeous long-term uptrend had been in place - but I've consistently said that gold is a trade, not a way of life or a religion and certainly not a currency.
And so with the old trend broken to bits, there's nothing left to discuss.
BECAUSE THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING FUNDAMENTAL ABOUT THE GOLD TRADE, THERE HAS ONLY BEEN A RISING-DEMAND-RELATIVE-TO-SUPPLY STORY TO TELL.
And now the spell is broken and many reluctant and late buyers have woken up to a commodity-style sell-off in an asset that they were told was as stable as cash. They've woken up to the fact that anytime the proverbial shit has hit the fan, their "safety trade" has let them down - from Dubai's blow-up to the Grexit that wasn't to the almost-collapse of the Euro Zone to the Arab Spring to the death of Andy Rooney. The Emperor has been spotted sans clothing. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
It simply doesn't work. The money printing is endless and central banks aren't even pretending they'll stop. Japan is daring you to look away, they'll denude every single forest in the eastern hemisphere before they stop making baby yens. So where is the inflation fear?
Where the fuck is your Gold Messiah now?
I expect the True Believers will continue to scream their heads off about money printing and that the real inflation hasn't even begun yet. They might be right, I can't see the future. But the Believers will conveniently fail to point out that stocks and real estate are also an inflation hedge - and a more productive one at that. That's fine, I live on Long Island and we have New York Jets fans here, too.
I have a friend who runs an all-gold hedge fund. He tells me he has a fairly easy job because his LPs don't care about performance, just that his portfolio continues to represent their rigid ideology. His investors have punched their tickets a long time ago and nothing will change their minds; his job under these circumstances is to simply maintain consistency of portfolio composition and quarterly update blather. He goes about his work of buying and selling gold futures and miners with half a smirk on his face.

I bought some gold and mining stocks a while back, but only because I suspected other folks to drive up the price due to panic in the market.  I was right there.  However, I think I'm going to keep what I've bought, more as a strategy of diversification (or maybe because I am kind of a stock collector, which could also be considered a hoarder), as opposed to taking my profits.  However, I agree about the gold bugs, and their faith having nothing to do with fundamentals.  With the number of dollars in circulation, and the ounces of gold in existence, we never were, and never will go back to the gold standard.  The true believers need to wake up to that fact.