Investing your hard earned money in pure gold nugget with a company like GoldLine, safe, reliable, a decision worthy of prayer. Because of gold’s historic perceived value, the metal of choice for ballin’ players through out history from the ancient Aztecs to Henry VIII and now Chamillionaire, having your money staked in owning a lot of the physical element gold, keeping doubloons, ingots, used Rolexes, and dental fillings you’ve stolen from dead people in the fireproof safe under the stairs in the basement, would be a wise investment decision. Right?

At least Glenn Beck thinks so. Sure gold is a really well known precious metal that’s used in many of the things rich people can afford to buy (jewelry, Monster cables, exotic food and alcohol, Bentleys) and it sure as hell is pretty to look at, but did you know that the human body can’t properly process or digest gold, not even during times of economic hardship? Gold also has been observed to flat-out lose its market value when the world gets plunged into fiery Armageddon and the first things to get burned down are the banks and stock exchanges. Certainly not “Rapture-proof”.

You cannot play videos or listen to music or surf the web or be entertained in any way by gold, and unlike a good deal of the marketing presentations from GoldLine, investing in physical gold has never earned any significant amount of money over the course of the investment for the buyer, rendering it a pretty useless strategy to diversify your wealth with.

Good investments, like real estate or stock dividends or bonds or equities or selling people a totally useless investment, help the buyer generate steady income for their portfolio and “put the money to work” for them, hopefully leaving you with a significant return that you can laugh all the way to the bank with. Gold doesn’t do any of these “wealth building” things, and in very troubled times there are better metal-based items that you could have spent your money on to ensure your survival.

Gold just kind of sits there.

So then how can these GoldLine commercials speak so confidently about the opportunity and need for immediacy when investing in gold when we are living in the most troubled of times right now (according to The Glenn Beck Show, Rush Limbaugh, Fox and Friends, The Laura Ingram show, etc) and when it has been demonstrated by some of the smartest money managers in the world that gold is the most historically fool-hearty place one could put their money?

Trusted broadcast personalities, the same broadcasters who bring to millions of fans their favorite talk-radio or FOX News programing every day, saying you should trust them and GoldLine with your money in these commercials that run in between the personality’s broadcast? What could be wrong with that?

Not a bad way to get your handsome face on an advertisement, but have you ever notice that once these commercials wrap up they bounce the viewer back to that gold spokesperson’s news show? A “news show” where the host constantly ponders the doom and gloom of the United States and questions it’s economic stability, all the while merely suggesting that gold has historically held its value and hey, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to invest in if you’ve got the extra money lying around (paper money won’t be worth anything once Obama personally puts us all into FEMA camps anyway!).

This doesn’t qualify as some kind of anti-trust? TV and radio hucksters masquerading as “journalists” and enlightened minds who have a following in the millions and could drive billions of dollars worth of sales for GoldLine by advertising something their paid to talk about on their “news” and talk programs?

Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York thinks so, and he’s launching an official investigation into it!

Glenn Beck’s calculated and well thought out response? Dick jokes! And the establishment of a website, WeinerFacts.com, where you can find even more rips on Anthony Weiner and his last name.

Yup, that just happened. Beck’s smug retort to Anthony Weiner’s serious claims only demonstrate to me how dreadfully concerned Glenn Beck is over a federal investigation into his relationship with his biggest sponsor and cash generating asset. In a regulated market, where you can like, earn actual money, much of what Beck is doing would be considered insider trading (not disclosing his own stake in GoldLine, dispensing unvetted investment advice to a large audience, influencing the marketplace with his media exposure, knowingly endorsing his product as a “good investment for your livelihood” when in fact it is not). In the unregulated world of precious metal exchanges however, Beck and GoldLine Inc. could be facing a variety of hefty charges ranging from criminal to consumer fraud to maybe even slander. I’d be making bad jokes too if I was as screwed as Beck is!

This quote from an excellent Politico article last year should sum things up nicely about the cabal of gold selling firms and their conservative commentator lackeys:

Peter Epstein, president of Merit Financial Services, which advertises on Beck’s show, says gold retailers expect favorable coverage from commentators on whose shows they pay to advertise. “You pay anybody on any network and they say what you pay them to say,” said Epstein. “They’re bought and sold.

Beck, who through a publicist declined to comment for this story, addressed the Media Matters allegation on his Thursday show, saying “So, I shouldn’t make money?” And he made the point that he touted gold before he became a Goldline endorser, and urges viewers to study and pray before investing in it.

Glenn Beck made $32 million last year according to Forbes. That money sure could buy a ton of gold. Need more evidence that maybe Glenn Beck and the high pressured salespeople at GoldLine don’t deserve your investment nest egg? Mother Jones has compiled an even better article than mine on how Glenn Beck is fleecing his viewers and how GoldLine is making away with more loot than Nic Cage in the patriotic thriller ‘National Treasure’:

Richardson suspects he’s not the only Goldline customer who didn’t know what he was getting into. “I ain’t got no college degree or nothing, but some of these older people think they’re investing in gold, but you’re not. You’re investing in coins,” he says. The price of gold has increased 133 percent since the beginning of 2006, yet many Goldline customers say they have lost money on their purchases after discovering—as Richardson did—that they had badly overpaid for their gold coins. Richardson is one of 44 people across the country who have filed complaints against Goldline with the Los Angeles BBB in the past three years; customers have also griped about their dealings with the company on message boards such as Ripoff Report and PissedOffConsumer.com. Regulators in Missouri have sanctioned the company for pressuring an elderly couple to liquidate their other investments to buy overpriced coins.

The Federal Trade Commission received 17 separate complaints about Goldline’s sales tactics between early 2006 and May 2010, according to information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Many of those stories mirror Richardson’s. One customer, whose name was redacted by the FTC, filed a complaint in February, writing, “Not knowing anything about buying gold, I called Goldline International, Inc. because of their advertisement on Fox News and the fact that Glenn Beck endorses them.” Like Richardson, this customer originally wanted bullion, but the sales rep “absolutely insisted” on 20-franc coins, and the customer relented. Unable to get a refund, the customer reported paying $369 apiece for coins that could be bought elsewhere for as low as $208. A Washington state couple nearing retirement invested $31,812 in foreign coins after calling to inquire about gold bullion “as a hedge against the falling dollar.” Once they realized they’d overpaid, it was too late for a refund. Another customer complained that a sales rep “insisted” on selling French 20 franc coins: “He would not relent. He told me lies.” A quadriplegic Californian described being persuaded to pay $5,000 for $3,000 worth of gold coins after disclosing a recent inheritance to a Goldline rep.

Even God thinks gold is a fruitless, petty, and fleeting thing to own:

1 Corinthians 3:12-14 ESV

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

Ezekiel 7:19 ESV

They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing. Their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord. They cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity.

Matthew 10:9 ESV

Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts,

God also didn’t seem to appreciate all that golden idol stuff back in the day. When you were praying on making your investment in gold did any of that biblical stuff occur to you? It’s probably a good idea to just stay away from putting your money in gold all together, at least until GoldLine is forced to litigate and has to pay back all its investors for scamming them.