For years the FT has portrayed investing in gold as akin to flat-earthism, Alan Beattie at the FT is perhaps the most prominent, if not sole, media supporter of Gordon Brown’s sell-off of gold a decade ago. Guido has long lamented the FT’s tendency to follow the latest intellectual fashions and it is no surprise the FT approved of the Balls/Brown sell-off of gold reserves. It was the newspaper that was the biggest cheerleader for the euro and all things EU, of which it is less effusive about nowadays. The FT’s comment pages are full of wishy-washy, centrist, establishment, hand-wringing of the limousine liberal kind – no surprise given they are overseen by a former editor of Prospect, the monthly journal of wishy-washy limousine liberals. FT readers from the City who don’t simmer with self-loathing know it is best to skip the comment pages and read the market reports and the surprisingly good arts pages.

So how would you have done if you had invested in the stock market instead of gold? Take a look at the charts below, gold out performed the stock market by 17% last month, that is not relative out performance, that is gold was up 12% and the stock market was down 5%. Over the year gold is up some 40%, over 5 years and 10 years gold is more than 100% ahead of stocks.

Stocks of course pay dividends but likewise gold can be leased out to short sellers for an income. Alan Beattie insists gold is speculative, Guido would say, on the contrary, it is an insurance against a collapse of paper assets. So far Guido has been right for a decade and Beattie has been wrong. He now reckons the gold bubble is really about to pop this time. Guido reckons the West’s government debt crisis is about to take off big time and would rather own hard assets like gold and farmland than paper assets. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

UPDATE: Alan Beattie tweets to complain that he never recommended stocks as an alternative to gold, above amended accordingly. Nevertheless gold is up nearly 600% since the Balls/Brown sell-off, which he supported. Beattie is emphasising that his injunctions against gold purchases applied to central banks not investors. But not the central banks of India and China apparently…