For those who are speculating on the dollar—i.e. most people—there was good news this week. The dollar rose almost a milligram, to 28.3mg gold. That's a big gain, and welcome news for those who keep all of their eggs in the one dollar basket, perhaps because they don't want to risk any of it on pet rocks.

Yes, Jason Zweig at the Wall Street Journal actually said that. He couldn't be more wrong—and yet he had a point. Wrong? Let me count the ways.

One, per his title, he compares gold to a pet rock. A pet rock is either a useless knickknack, or else a fraud that preys on the irrational psychology of people in crowds. Gold is honest money, and the extinguisher of debt. Just because governments have banned it from the monetary system, does not make it either useless or a fraud.

Two, he quotes a Barclays researcher saying that investors have become disillusioned with gold. Well, gold is not an investment. Even if one accepts the mainstream premise that gold is a commodity that you buy so you will make money—i.e. dollars—when it goes up, this is speculation. It is not investing. Our whole financial world is now stoned on the drug of zero interest rates. With no yield to be had, capital gain is all.

Three, he says to own gold is an act of faith. Boy is this backwards! To go all-in on the debt of bankrupt governments is the real act of faith. And that is what one does, if one holds dollars or euros or pounds, etc.

Fourth, he refers to inflation (by which he means rising prices) a few times. Gold purportedly has magical powers to fight inflation, but gold isn't a “panacea” for it (straw man, much?) He later says gold is viewed as a hedge against inflation, but it does not go up as much as the alternatives (whatever those may be).

I could go on, but I will stop here. Despite the cornucopia of errors, there is an excellent point buried in Zweig's blog post.

Suppose, as Zweig says, that everyone—or at least the current marginal gold trader—views gold as a speculative vehicle. In this view, it's only useful to make bucks. Then, of course its price action is about as rational as the path of the planchette on a Ouija board. Everyone has the same price charts, and the same technical tools. Everyone can see the same trends. So when it is going up, it goes up. And when it is going down, it goes down.