On the absurdity of buying gold

Izabella Kaminska Feb 11 11:18am: "all evidence points to a serious network-wide issue that’s spiralling out of control ... the root cause of the insecurity is the increased pressure on banks to make their systems as user friendly as the systems of non-bank challengers ... even if the latter don’t necessarily have the same quality of checks and balances in place ... the real cost for banks might not even be associated with the rise of successful fraud attacks on the network but rather the missed business opportunities associated with contaminated data profiles"


Izabella Kaminska Feb 11 1:33pm: "the absurdity of allocating capital to gold markets in a par value crisis, all that really does is encourage more resources to be spent on gold production, which only adds more unproductive claims over the underlying productive economy. This only encourages further predation, all the while drawing resources away from more useful investments elsewhere"


I'd say the first article has something to do with the second. The assumption is that there are "more useful" "truly productive investments based on improving the base standard of living in an inequality busting manner" elsewhere. If there aren't, and people are worried about the "assets" the banks hold, then is buying gold really absurd?