Revisiting a Hard Lesson on Counter-party Risk

For those precious metals investors who learned nothing from MF Global, check out this post from Zerohedge.com:
"On Monday, the company, Amber Gold, Sp. z o.o., which sold a gold-indexed investment of its own design and offered higher interest rates than banks, said it was halting operations. It pledged eventually to repay about $24 million it said it owed to roughly 50,000 clients in Poland.
Amber Gold's 28-year-old founder, Marcin Plichta, who has publicly acknowledged past convictions for misappropriating funds, couldn't be reached to comment."
Sure, this was Poland, and the guy had a questionable past.  If we get right down to it, how different is that from the U.S. and Jon Corzine?

Bottom line?  One of the greatest strengths of gold is that there is zero counter-party risk--IF YOU HOLD IT YOURSELF!  Sure, "paper gold" is convenient, but is it worth it?


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