Glenn Beck's Golden Fleece

How Beck and other right-wing talkers turned paranoia into a pitch for Goldline, the gold dealer one congressman says is conspiring to "cheat consumers." A Mother Jones investigation.

— By Stephanie Mencimer

Wed May. 19, 2010 12:00 AM PDT

Read the latest on this story: Consumers tip off the FTC about Goldline, Beck's counterattack on Rep. Anthony Weiner, the story behind Goldline's perfect BBB rating, and the left-wing radio hosts who pitch gold.

Tune in to Glenn Beck's Fox News show or his syndicated radio program, and you'll soon learn about the evils of the US dollar, a currency on the verge of collapse due to runaway government spending, a ballooning national debt, and imminent Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation. To defend yourself against the coming financial holocaust, as Beck explained on his radio show last November, you need to "think like a German Jew in 1934, maybe 1931." And that means thinking about buying some gold.

Conveniently, Beck made that suggestion as he was in the midst of interviewing his own "gold guy," Mark Albarian, the president and CEO of Goldline International, a Santa Monica, California-based precious metals company that is a major sponsor of Beck's radio and cable shows—and now the target of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). In a seamless intertwining of anxiety and entrepreneurship, Beck and Albarian amicably debated whether we've already hit "peak gold" or whether the price of gold, then at $1,100 an ounce, might yet hit the inflation-adjusted high of $2,200 it saw back in 1980. Beck speculated that gold could go as high as $2,500 an ounce: "I think people are running out of options on what, you know, could be worth something at all."