Back when there had been a gold boom, there was talk about how gold is the only "real" currency, along with maybe silver or others.  The idea is that gold retains its own valye on its own, and paper currency is merely bubble driven?  The impression I have is that gold was somehow immune to bubbles, because of its limited quantities, and that alone was sufficient to make it retain value.

Well, I see this...

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/15/investing/gold-prices-china/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

There is currently a selling off of gold and the price is plumeting.  It seems, based on this, that gold itself can be subject to bubbles.  I don't see really a strong need for gold, unless it is in the tech industry, so it seems to me, its price is as affected by bubbles as anything else.

In this, I am not saying that just mindlessly printing currency and flooding the market with it, is good, nor can you keep borrowing indefinitely.  Just that it seems like just telling people to "buy gold" isn't really a lock for anything, since there isn't much practical use for gold. I can see productive land being of value though, as in transferable skills and tools of production, and even raw materials (say water), but gold?  

So, what exactly, outside of prettiness and scarcity (and uses in some high tech arries) is supposed to make gold this slam dunk of security to retain value?  Heck, there is only one of me.  That doesn't mean that I owning me means that you are insured of retaining your value against inflation.

You should look at it over a longer period of time.

This could be a huge drop but it's way too early to expect it to stay this low.

you havent seen nothing yet, wait until the feds stop printing money into wallstreet. then you will see a big ass correction.

Well its probably because gold never deteriorates. It will remain the same for millions and millions of years. So therefor its a very secure investment. That and its also used in sooooo many things, especially electronics :)

Gold is still not as valuable as it once was. take into consideration also inflation, cost of storage and no interest, and you have a winner.

Oh, and gold is highly speculative right now. And in a crisis, you cannot even eat it.

No one said gold doesn't have bubbles. Just that gold is resistant and will never be worthless and always retain some value.

Don't be shocked if gold recovers actually fairly quickly.

Afterall the silly rise of Bitcoins more or less shows how much people trust paper currencies now.

It is rare :)

I am not going to say that tangible assets, as opposed to paper ones, don't have value.  Just gold is made out to me some sort of universal place to park results of financial transactions, in order to make sure you are safe. But, what I see is people merely drive the price up and make it a bubble, as about anything else.  Even real estate, which has more real value, can be subject to the bubble nature.  There is this distortion that goes one the moment it starts to get hyped up.

This. Look at what happened to platinum recently:

Gold is safer than platinum, but it's not inmune.

Also gold makes awesome paperweights, it's one of the densest elements known :P

People go for metals and other commodities when they believe there is a spike of inflation to happen.  Thing now is though, all that money bring printed by central banks is going into a debt moneyhole and not getting out in the economy at all.  There is little stimulus.  And because prices are governed by expectations, people aren't expecting hyperinflation, so thys they are dumping the metals and commodities.  End result could be that you have a 1% of 1% who ends up owning all the debt and then grabs up all tangible assets in an attempt to get them.  They end up gaining the world, but killing the economy in the process.  Assets not in motion aren't worth much, only to individuals who presume that there will be a demand for said assets down the road.  But if you have masses falling way beingd, they won't demand the assets, they demand things to survive with.  Since  you can't eat gold (unless you go to some fancy smanshy chef who does weird), you will take essentials for survival.

All aboard the crazy train everyone...