"Gold is a currency. Throughout the history, I won't tell you in length, money was like a check in a checkbook and what you would do was get your gold and gold was like a medium. So gold is one of the currencies-- We have dollars, we have euros, we have yen and we have gold.
Now it doesn't have the capacity. The capacity of moving money into gold in a large number is a extremely limited. So the players in this world that I have contact with that move that money really don't view gold as an effective alternative, but it could be a barometer and it is an alternative for smaller amounts of money.
There's no sensible reason not to have some. If you're going to own a currency, it's not sensible not to own gold. Now it depends on the amount of gold. But if you don't own, I don't know 10%, if you don't have that and that depends on the world, then there's no sensible reason other than you don't know history and you don't know the economics of it.
Ray Dalio is an American businessman and founder of Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater Associates has since attracted many clients including pension funds and is currently (as of January 2012) the largest hedge fund in the world with nearly $120 billion under management.
