The real reason you need gold – it's insurance

Don't know why you should own gold? Think of it in much the same way as home insurance. You always have it just in case, but you really really don't want to end up claiming on it.

Adam Fergusson, author of When Money Dies - the only place to turn if you want to know about how hyperinflation ruins societies - is much in demand as a speaker these days.

Hedge funds and economic institutions around the world all want him to visit to tell them how our own inflation debacle might unfold. Sometimes he obliges. When he does, he usually tells them that he expects the sovereign debt problem in the West to be dealt with via high double-digit inflation for some years to come. He doesn't tell them he expects hyperinflation.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.