David Einhorn is buying gold to bet against central banks

Interesting report on the FT. David Einhorn is a very talented hedge fund manager and I have been following the news on his fund for quite some time. I am glad to see that he is bullish on gold as well.

Hedge fund investors who made money last year by betting against investment banks are now buying gold as a way of betting against central banks.

The gold bulls include David Einhorn, founder of hedge fund Greenlight Capital, who last year came under the spotlight for his short selling of shares in Lehman Brothers, after arguing that the bank did not have enough capital to offset its exposure to falling property prices. Other funds looking at gold include Eton Park and TPG-Axon, investors said.
[...]
Investors such as Mr Einhorn are turning to gold because they are worried about the response of the US Federal Reserve and other central banks to the global economic crisis. A bet on gold is essentially a bet against all paper currencies.

“The size of the Fed’s balance sheet is exploding and the currency is being debased. Our guess is that if the chairman of the Fed is determined to debase the currency, he will succeed,” Mr Einhorn wrote in a recent letter to his investors. “Our instinct is that gold will do well either way: deflation will lead to further steps to debase the currency, while inflation speaks for itself.”
[...]
Peter Munk, chairman of Barrick Gold, the world’s largest miner of bullion, told investors last week that [...] “The only option to governments is to print and print more money,” he said. “That will end in tears.”