CIK

Jeremy Siegel's Silly P/E

The reason you need to look at more than just the simple sum of earnings across an index is the ability of the members of the index to distribute earnings. That said I am not sure that market cap weighting is the right answer either.

Take the simple example of an index of 2 (Companies A & B) with equal market caps. If A has earnings of $1 and B has a loss of $1 and assuming you can only distribute earnings the ability of the index to distribute earnings is $1 not $0.

The Final Market Bubble

Disclosure - I do not own GLD or any milk cows

The Final Market Bubble

typo...tune of a few trillion

The Final Market Bubble

Recovery not the problem. US Govt balance sheet expansion largely asset backed. In recovery those assets are sold back to private sector and proceeds used to buy back US debt issuance, as needed. While in the current environment would not rule out the US Govt need/interest in rolling the printing presses, think that you overestimate the problem to the tune of a trillion.

Separately, in the potential chaos you predict where exactly do you intend to utliize your gold coins? You may be better off buying a milk cows with the funds you were going to invest in gold coins in that scenarios. One word, barter.