When Matthew wrote his gospel in 85 AD, one pure silver Denarius covered the daily wages of a skilled Roman craftsman. Three hundred years later, the Denarius had been reduced to a worthless scrap of copper alongside a crumbled empire.
Gold is continuing its lackluster short-term performance, but the fundamentals are now shaping up to trigger the second phase of its massive bull market.
If you happened to be walking around Paris from 1715 to 1722, you would have encountered one of the first experiments with centrally planned banking, paper money, and fractional reserves.