How does the increasing diversification into gold among U.S. investors compare with what you’re seeing globally?

If you go to China, India, or some other emerging economies, you find people who traditionally use gold and silver as their bank account, as their savings, and as their investment. They avoided stocks, they avoided bonds, and they avoided currencies, because their economies and their governments were less developed and shakier. These people now are moving up the economic chain and their diversifying their pool of assets: buying stocks, bank CD’s, bonds, and being more trusting in their banks and their governments. They are reducing the percentage of their wealth in gold and silver. It looks like their moving away from gold and silver, even as they buy historically large amounts of gold and silver. What they’re really doing is their moving to a more sophisticated diversified portfolio.

In the industrialized world in the United States, Europe, and Canada, you find people moving away from stocks and bonds and buying more gold and silver. It looks like their moving in the opposite direction from their emerging market counterparts, but in fact they’re moving in the same direction. They’re becoming much more sophisticated and much wiser investors. They’re saying, “Gee, I always put all my faith in the stock market, the U.S. industry, and the U.S. government, and the U.S. bond market, and maybe that’s not wise. I can put some faith in those things, but I should have some faith in gold and silver.”

So you’re finding that globally, people are diversifying their portfolios more. In the emerging markets, even though they’re diversifying away from gold and silver because their economies are in so much better shape. They’re buying more gold and silver than ever before.