by Al Lewis — DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Friday, November 06, 2009 (FOXBusiness) — I wish I had an ounce of gold for every time somebody told me an ounce of gold was a dumb thing to buy.

I wish I had listened to Pierre Lassonde.

I first wrote about Lassonde in August 2003 when gold prices soared to a then-unthinkable $375 an ounce.

Lassonde told me he had 60% of his liquid assets invested in the precious metal and claimed it had nowhere to go but up. By up, he meant, $500, $1,000 and then maybe even $6,500 an ounce.

“One thing I know for sure is that gold is going to have three zeros after the first number,” he said. “I just don’t know how big that number is going to be.”

Some of my colleagues, sources and readers, scoffed as I touted this bold speculation.

Lassonde was then president of Denver, Colo.,-based Newmont Mining Corp., one of the world’s largest gold companies. He’d also written: “Gold Book: The Complete Investment Guide to Precious Metals.” So maybe he was just another gold bug talking up his business.

In 2005, when gold had safely crossed the $500 mark, as Lassonde predicted, I wrote about him again. And I still heard from naysayers…

This week, gold hit record highs again, nearing $1,100 an ounce…

Lassonde … says India’s move highlights a critical shift. This year is the first in decades when more gold will be purchased for financial reasons than for jewelry.

“The naysayers haven’t clued in,” Lassonde said Wednesday. “People are buying gold as a financial instrument. And they think it’s a better instrument than the U.S. dollar, or the euro, or the pound or any other currency.”

“This is a hard-asset cycle,” said Lassonde, referring to commodities like oil and precious metals vs. financial assets. “The cycle still has five to 10 years to go. … Don’t bet against the cycle.”

“People are coming to realize that gold isn’t the barbarous relic people thought it was,” Russell Ball, chief financial officer of Newmont, said. “With the collapse of Lehman Brothers … we saw triple-A-rated debt become worthless over a very short time frame. Now we’re seeing high-net worth individuals … put a significant portion of their portfolios into gold.”

Central banks around the world are becoming net buyers, as opposed to net sellers, of gold, perhaps setting a new floor for gold prices in a once unthinkable range.

Gold could even triple from here. I know, I know. I sound like a gold bug. One of the things I hate about gold is the way it’s advertised on the radio and TV…

[source]

Comment: This is one of those RARE yet SUPERB articles that you run across oh-so-seldom in the mainstream media which frankly and fairly paint gold in the right light.

There’s much more than I’ve excerpted here, so click through and give it the full read that it deserves.

[And on a personal note I had to both laugh and agree totally with the author's comments about the awful TV and radio ads that we must endure from time to time...]

R.