Gold is more than money; it's fiat currency's worst enemy.

For decades we have been programmed to believe that fiat currency like the US Dollar or, more recently, the Euro is "money".  Of course, they are not and never were.  Even when the dollar was backed by gold pre-1971, it was always gold that was the money whereas the dollar was never anything more than an IOU for gold.  An IOU is a debt.  It is not money.  It might seem a subtle difference and, during normal times, the differences between the two are quite small in practice.  But these are not normal times.  These are times when all the scams are falling apart.  That means that smart people will learn what is really what.  They will understand the important differences between payment in full right here and now vs. promises to pay in full sometime in the future.  They will figure out what a Wimpy Promise is and they will react accordingly.  Either that or they will lose everything they ever worked for at some point.

Here is the simple truth of the matter: paper currency can never be money.  Ever.  It can be confused as being money by economically, politically and historically uneducated people but the reality is unchanging: paper currency is never anything more than a marker, an IOU for real money.  And that's best case.  Even that falls apart when the paper currency loses its commodity backing.   In fact, when we had commodity backed currency the government was very proud of the fact.  It would issue "silver certificates" and even 

"gold certificates" which could, upon demand of the bearer, be converted into a certain predefined weight of physical metal of a given purity at a predefined exchange ratio.   Government proudly printed this promise on each of those notes ("note" is a technical term meaning a debt instrument).  You can see this on the face of the silver certificate 1 dollar bill where it says "One Dollar in silver payable to the bearer upon demand".  The gold certificate is even more explicit.  It says "20 dollars in gold coin payable to the bearer upon demand".

Some terminology definition is critically important here.  "Money" has a definition that has been blurred (purposefully by con men) over the years until it is now nearly synonymous with the word "currency".  But the two are very different.  Money is something that is universally recognized to be of enduring value.  Nobody has to inform you that money has value because, for whatever reason, people have throughout time have agreed that it simply does.   Money has value that crosses borders, cultures and generations.  Gold was money both for the Incas as well as for the Spaniards who came there to steal it from them.  This is an amazing fact when you think about it: two civilizations of vastly different technological development met for the first time when the conquistadors encountered the Incas and both of them considered gold as money.  

Money does not lose its buying power relative to goods and services in the economy.  There could be fluctuations of course, but a certain measure of work or a certain measure of food will, on average and over time, trade into and out of real money at about the same exchange rate.  Currency, on the other hand, is a placeholder for money.  It is a stand-in.  Currency can be used in place of money in the market place when real money is inconvenient to use for trade for some reason.  Money is also currency but currency is not money.

When you pay for something with a check, that check is not money.  Nobody will argue this fact.  The check is a promise to pay something (generally dollars or some other fiat currency today) when it is cashed.  Making this promise to pay is quite different than actually paying in full and shopkeepers often have checks bounce on them to prove this fact.  Just because some people will accept your check does not mean that it is money.  They are simply accepting your promise that the check will convert into something of perceived value in trade for whatever it is that you bought.  Checks are a form of currency, but not of money. 

Understand also that even though a check is redeemed for, say, dollars, that does not make dollars money.  We have a multilevel fiat currency system - promises upon promises.  Take the case of California.  When it gets in trouble, it pays workers in California-issued IOUs (AKA "Individual Registered Warrants").  The IOUs are promises to pay dollars in the future (plus intrest).  The dollars they pay are mandated to be legal tender against any dollar denominated debts including taxes.  In all of this hierarchial layering of promises, there is no real money.  The reason the global economy is falling apart is because without the hard discipline of real money, too many promises have been made.  Promises are very easy to make and so they are made in abundance.  But real money has to be worked for.  When there are too many promises and not enough real money available to cover them then it is a mathematical certainty that someone is going to get stiffed for payment.  The global economic house of cards that is collapsing right is really the market trying to sort out who that will be.  People are running into real money (physical gold) so that they will not be the people who get stiffed by Wimpy Promises.  It really is as simple as that.

The use of currency instead of money is not in and of itself a scam.  Gold and silver certificates were a perfectly legitimate invention.  The problem occurs when there is no way to track the number of paper claims on gold and silver as represented by the number of certificates issued.  Politicians always get greedy and begin printing up more certificates than can ever be exchanged for metals.  Forgers do the same thing.  A fair analysis would reveal little difference between currency forgers and government (note: real money cannot be forged - you could never pass off to an intelligent person a gold coin which was, in fact, not gold.  A scale and a caliper is all one ever needs to verify the validity of a gold coin).  Thus, there are downsides to the use of currency in the market place instead of money and it should be up to the people to make this trade off if they want to.  Where the royal scam comes in is when government prints up currency that is completely unbacked by anything and then demands that you use it for trade.  This is the scam of fiat currency.

When you have a scam running side by side against something honest, you have to attack the honest thing lest the truth of the scam be known by the people.  Nobody will participate in the scam if everyone is wise to it.  Thus, governments have been trying to suppress the price of gold for many years in the belief that they could possibly fool all the people all the time with enough mind washing and propaganda.  But it doesn't work like that and it never did.  Gold is patient.  It just sits there, all heavy and unchanging.  It doesn't rust or tarnish or evaporate.  Gold is not formed by chemical processes; it is elemental and thus born only in the incredible heat and pressure associated with the death of stars (supernovae with progenitor masses between 20 and 40 solar masses).  Once born, gold is eternal.  Governments throughout history have tried to deny that gold is money and the people are fooled for many years each time, but eventually the truth comes out.  Con men know this and thus gold is very much like Edgar Allen Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.  It may be out of sight but it burns in the minds of the criminals and they want it silenced lest it give away their crimes. 

Recently, Zerohedge reported on the latest insight into the gold price suppression scam, brought to us courtesy of Wikileaks:

"China Radio International sponsored newspaper World News Journal (Shijie Xinwenbao)(04/28): "...The U.S. and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold's function as an international reserve currency. They don't want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or Euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency ..."

So, gold suppression by the western powers is no secret to Chinese leaders.  In fact, they see gold as a valuable weapon in the war against the scam-backed U.S. global dominance whereby the U.S. declares anyone it doesn't like a "threat to national security", all the while preaching tolerance and the value of diversity.  More "do as I say and not as I do" from the con artists in D.C.

Short term pullbacks and dips aside, the scam of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking is falling apart globally.  Gold (and probably silver) will be the beneficiaries.