Beware Of Gold, Continued

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You read it here first. Many of the purchases people make from the gold brokers that increasingly clutter the cable news and talk radio streams are horrifically lousy investments. Now comes a report from Congressman Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., expanding on what is already disclosed in the fine print on the websites of firms like Goldline.

Goldline Grossly Overcharges For Their Coins The average Goldline mark-up was 90% above the melt value of the coin.  The largest markup seen on a coin was 208% above the melt value.  The average Goldline markup in comparison to the best price we could locate on competitors websites was 47%, going as high as 102% on one of the coins they offered.

Goldline Falsely Claims To Offer “Good” Investments By selling gold at twice the melt value, the price of gold would need to double for consumers to break even on their “investment.”

Goldline Salespeople Misrepresent Their Ability To Give “Investment Advice” Sales people imply that they are “Investment Advisors” or “Financial Advisers” by offering investment advice, which insinuates that they have some sort of fiduciary responsibility to get you the most return on your investment. However, since they are not licensed “Investment Advisors” (the industry term), they have no such responsibility.  In 2006, the Missouri Secretary of States’ Office, Securities Division filed formal consent order against Goldline for exactly this reason and recovered over $200k for an elderly consumer that was ripped off.

Weiner’s report goes on to attack Glenn Beck, who is a major booster of Goldline, for having an “unholy alliance” with the company. This suggests that Weiner may have motivations beyond protecting the nest eggs of Goldline clients. According to Politico, Beck teed off on Weiner Tuesday during his radio show.

“This is incredible. This is incredible,” he said. “This is again another arm of this administration coming out to try to shut me down,” he alleged, calling Weiner and the Obama administration “monsters” and the report a return to the “McCarthy era.”