This highly unsatisfying report at Bloomberg adds some mainstream media perspective to Fed chief Ben Bernanke’s gold price commentary yesterday that came in response to a question from Rep. Paul Ryan during House Budget Committee testimony as detailed here.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said gold prices, which surged to a record yesterday, are sending a different signal on inflation than raw materials.

“Other commodity prices have fallen recently quite severely, including oil prices and food prices,” Bernanke said today in response to a question during testimony to a House Budget Committee hearing. “So gold is out there doing something different from the rest of the commodity group.”
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“Bernanke is dispelling the argument that people are out there buying gold because of the threat of inflation,” said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at LaSalle Futures Group in Chicago. “Deflation is now more of a threat.”
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“There is a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety in the financial markets right now,” Bernanke said. “Some people believe that holding gold will be a hedge against the fact that they view many other investments being risky and hard to predict at this point.”

Gold has outperformed stocks, bonds and other commodities this year.

“When there’s nowhere else to turn, people turn to gold,” Zeman said.

It’s a real mystery, that rising gold price – a collective “I Dunno” from the central bank and the mainstream financial media. In asking his question, Rep. Ryan went to where neither of these groups apparently felt comfortable, noting, “gold hit an all-time high yesterday which I think most people would view as a vote of no confidence against fiat currencies”.