Buy Gold Now: How a Real Estate Bust, our Bulging National Debt, and the Languishing Dollar Will Push Gold to Record Highs

Buy Gold Now is an easily digestible investment guide for people, like me, who like to be taken by the hand and led step-by-step when it comes to the world of finance. McGuire makes a very convincing case that as the dollar continues its long decline, fuelled by the USA's ballooning government deficit and sinking trade imbalance with China and elsewhere, gold provides the safest of havens. Indeed, gold seems likely to repeat the fantastic gains it posted between 1971 and 1980, when it rose from $35 to $850 an ounce. Already it's climbing again - from around $300 in 2000 to close to $900 now - and the run looks set to continue for a number of years.Gold's prospects are fueled not only by the dollar's decline but also by the dismal state of other investment options (the U.S./Euro real estate bubble is deflating, stocks are yielding disappointing returns) and by the fact that there's simply not that much gold out there. New supply from top producers South Africa, Australia and the USA has been falling for more than 10 years, and demand from Asia's newly affluent consumers is booming.McGuire's analysis is spread across short, accessible chapters, well illustrated with charts, which also offer key insights about the U.S. subprime meltdown and China's hoarding of dollars to maintain its export economy (you may think that hoarding helps keep the dollar from free-fall, but as McGuire points out, China is going to have to hoard less in the future because the more greenbacks it buys, the greater the inflationary impact on its own economy). McGuire concludes with several chapters of practical tips on how and where to buy gold, whether physically or via internet accounts.Written with jargon-free facility, a reassuring awareness of gold's history, and enough repetition of key points to keep you from losing track of the main arguments, Buy Gold Now is a very welcome guide to financial planning in these troubled times.