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For months gold had been on a fantastic run, but last week gold prices plunged 9.6 percent, and then Monday another 2 percent, to $1,600 an ounce. Investors usually consider gold a safe bet, but they may not think of them that way anymore.

Gold was flying off the shelf in midtown Manhattan as the price of gold reached an all-time high amid a wild week on Wall Street. And although experts say fear was driving gold prices — not the markets — there were no signs that the demand for the metal would abate, or that its price would significantly drop in the long term.

Gold appears to be wearing a kryptonite vest as everything around it crumbles. In the face of stocks free-falling globally, the economy continuing to struggle, and jobs still hard to come by for millions of Americans, gold is surging. Gold rose to over $1,700 an ounce yesterday, and many believe we could see it top $2,000. We look at the history of gold starting when it was a mere $35 an ounce back in 1970.

The price of gold has risen steadily over the last decade. Harper's magazine columnist Thomas Frank takes a look at the mindset of “goldbugs” and others who invest in precious metals as a hedge against instability and the perception that governments can’t manage currencies or chaos. His latest monthly column “Easy Chair” is called “Gold Faithful: Profiting from Paranoia with Precious Metals.”

Wednesday, the price of gold hit an all-time high, costing buyers over $1450 per ounce. Part of the reason for the rise in price is a fear of inflation, uncertainty about the situation in the Middle East, and the weakness of the U.S. dollar and the Euro. But another factor driving up the price of gold maybe its biggest buyers: India and China. Why is the price of gold so high, and who is buying? We learn more about gold and the current commodities market from Louise Story, Wall Street and finance reporter for The New York Times. 

The head of the World Bank is calling for a new version of the gold standard. But what would you pick instead of gold?

Robert Zoellick laid out a proposal for reform of world currencies that included considering "employing gold as an international reference point ... Although textbooks may view gold as the old money, markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today."

If gold is the old money, then what else could we peg our currencies to?

In a troubled economy, goes conventional wisdom, one thing you can always depend on is the price of gold. That has never been more true, now that the price of gold has hit just over $1,200 an ounce.  Does this mean that we are seeing a modern day gold rush?

While the economy flailed this summer, gold prices hit a record high. WNYC reporter Lisa Chow has been reporting on the growing trend of gold investments and talks about who is investing in gold and why.

 

When the economic crisis hit, Adam Gold decided to buy a gun, stockpile a year's supply of food and invest in gold. So far, at least one of those investments has paid off.

The G-20 summit is underway in London and world leaders are hoping the day will end with a new global deal for tackling the worldwide recession. It’s a moment that reminds our next guest of the end of the year 1930, when the world was 18 months into the Great Depression. Stocks were down about 60 percent, corporate profits had been cut in half, and unemployment had climbed from 4 percent to about 10 percent. Sounds familiar, right? To help us understand what tools world leaders and central bankers can use to the global economy out of a recession and whether a return to the gold standard can help that is Liaquat Ahamed, the Author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.