EXCLUSIVE Owner of the GoldMoney company and one of the leading experts for investing in precious metals speaks for Srebrozlato.com

James Turk: Gold is the only
sound money

This interview with James Turk, world renown expert for precious metals investing is an extended version of the interview published in Lider, the Croatian largest business weekly, on February 11th, 2011. Hrvatska verzija...

James Turk gives an impression of a family man and a businessman that has been building his reputation for decades, quietly and painstakingly. When he speaks about precious metals, he does it with clarity, determination and conviction, but at the same time calmly, steadily and with the genuine interest for the interlocutor.

He is the founder of the GoldMoney, one of the largest global companies in precious metals that is safeguarding $1.5 billion of assets owned by more than 17,000 customers in 87 countries.

The reason for our conversation we find in very interesting developments in precious metal markets around the globe, but also in the occasion of his visit to Zagreb, Croatia at mid March of 2011.

He will introduce himself to Croatian business public as a keynote speaker at the first ever Croatian conference for investing in gold and other precious metals that is held on March 17th, at the Zagreb Westin Hotel. The conference is organized by Srebrozlato.com and Lider business weekly.

Could you please tell us a little bit about your career?

Turk: I trained as a banker, having joined a big New York bank in the late 1960s. I spent most of the 1970s working with the bank and living in Asia, but resigned from the bank in 1980, at about the first precious metals price peak.

It was a great experience, but I decided to focus my career on gold. It seemed clear to me from my reading of monetary history that the experiment begun in 1971 to remove gold from the global monetary system would eventually fail. I saw that inevitable failure of fiat money as an interesting business opportunity.

I had already thought of by then the core idea underlying GoldMoney. I just needed the technology to make GoldMoney possible. It took almost twenty years for that to happen, but I finally formed the company in 1998, which launched in 2001 after nearly three years of development.

What triggered your interest in precious metals since, for more than two decades, the market was considered utterly boring and unattractive?

Turk: It goes back to my upbringing. I learned the basics of sound money from my parents. My father was born in 1912 in the Austrian Empire in what is now Slovenia. He experienced the monetary turmoil after WW1, and brought this memory from his youth with him when my grandparents emigrated to the United States in 1924.

His understanding of sound money was reinforced by his experience from the bank failures during the Great Depression. So my sisters and I throughout our childhood learned the importance of hard work, savings and the value of sound money. Next >>>