SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Reuters: Super-rich investors buy gold by ton. “The world’s wealthiest people have responded to economic worries by buying gold by the bar — and sometimes by the ton — and by moving assets out of the financial system, bankers catering to the very rich said on Monday.”

UPDATE: Reader Art Welling writes:

It makes perfect sense to me. Rich people generally are not stupid people. The US governments spending spree can have only a limited number of outcomes, and most of them involve very high taxation, huge inflation, or both. Rich people suffer the most from both, so buying gold seems a perfectly reasonable precaution.

Look at it from the other direction… People with proven track records of wealth growth and accumulation are signaling serious financial trouble ahead. People who actually know what they are doing, and can prove it, are taking out heavy duty disaster insurance.

Uh Oh.

Indeed.