Take-away comments:JAMES STEEL: Well its certainly one of the places and of course being a precious metals analyst, my emphasis is on gold and the other precious metals and may not be as familiar with the other bolt holes if you like, that would open up, but traditionally it is a tried and true safe haven asset and we don't just have a few years data on this - many decades stretching very far back and gold has been successfully utilised as a safe haven - and in fact if you look at what the core issue is right now, it's confidence, be that confidence in the United States, confidence of investors in Europe, in Japan and the decline, or the erosion I should say in confidence in the financial markets or in elected officials even as one can see from low popularity ratings for most of the elected OECD officials. That has traditionally been a boon for gold and I think that's the current climate that we find ourselves in. I don't know if gold is the only safe haven but it is a powerful one and it is a very attractive one and one of the reasons is that it is a hard asset but also because it's a hard asset that is highly liquid. We have many other hard assets in the world for example, Canadian farmland springs to mind as a hard asset and for all I know it could be a very good investment but it's not as liquid as gold, you can't sell it in a hurry and many other hard assets you can't dispose of quickly. That is quite the opposite with gold so it is almost this unique blend of being a hard asset and liquid at the same time that I think makes it such an attractive safe haven and one of the few ones that spring to all investors' minds.
Listen to the Geoff Candy interview with James Steel here
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