My first girlfriend - and we're talking eighth grade here - was Persian. Maybe that's why I've had such a fascination with the Middle East most of my life.
This fascination manifests itself today through three primary channels: Middle Eastern cuisine, Middle Eastern travel (I'm trying to arrange a research trip to Iran at the moment, with a side trip just for giggles to Kabul, Afghanistan) and ancient coins from Middle Eastern empires.
You can guess, probably, that this is a story about coins.
In particular, it's about two gold coins that I recently purchased in London... and why ancient coins such as these not only represent great value in the market today, but they're also one of the best assets you can own in a world where interest rates will remain low well into the next decade and, here in the U.S., could slip into negative territory in coming months.
Gold has always had one shortcoming that gold bears point to with enthusiasm and for which gold bulls have no counterargument: Gold generates no earnings and no income. It is, effectively, a dead asset - or, in being a bit more generous - it's a hibernating asset.
In a world where interest rates allow traditional income investments such as CDs, bonds and money-market assets to kick off income for which investors are happy, gold has little allure.
But in a world in which interest rates are negligible - even negative - then the only knock against gold is suddenly neutered.