The pleasure is mine. Your post was a great read and you replying back makes it even better.
This issue is so simple and yet so complicated. For last hundred years the governments have actively tried to persuade masses to move away from gold. The people in power want us to measure wealth in a way that they see fit so they can easily mediate the distribution of wealth. This is the best case scenario and at it's worse, it is an outright subversion of basic human rights. For them the best way to do it is to change the very parameters of measurement of wealth.
An underlying theme in modern economics that everybody likes to gloss over is - Never in the history of mankind have we had such economic stability as we today. Then again never in the history of mankind the economic stability has been balanced on such a fragile fulcrum.
...................I can't help my rant.