Gold is also a refuge in scary times, and you can bet there are more than a few precious-metal stakes whose previous address was a mortgage-bond portfolio. Huge price increases in energy, food and other commodities have prompted fears of inflation such as this country hasn't seen since the 1980s.
Bartlett subscribes to the "Peak Oil" thesis, which says that the planet is running out of petroleum and that prices will continue to soar. As the theory gains adherents and oil futures shot above $140 a barrel yesterday, gold has continued to appreciate, making its fans look even smarter.
Few other Maryland congressmen or senators owned direct investments in commodities, metals or energy last year, all of which have been on fire.
Eastern Shore Republican Wayne Gilchrest, who lost his seat to Andy Harris, owned stock in oil refiner Valero Energy, which rose 40 percent last year, and electricity producer Dominion Resources, up 13 percent. But those gains were partly wiped out by his holdings in Citigroup, whose subprime mortgage business helped it get pounded for a 45 percent 2007 decline.
Conspicuously not participating in the energy bull market were Democrats Steny Hoyer and Dutch Ruppersberger. They owned large pieces of mutual funds managed by Legg Mason's Bill Miller, who has famously avoided oil stocks and gotten burned by housing and financial shares.
Hoyer had between $250,001 and $500,000 in Miller's Legg Mason Value Trust, which lost 7 percent of its value last year. Ruppersberger's stake in Value Trust was between $100,000 and $250,000, and he had between $15,001 and $50,000 in Legg Mason Opportunity Trust, another underperforming Miller fund. A stake in Legg Mason stock, which went from the $100 neighborhood to $75 last year, didn't help his portfolio.
Ruppersberger did, however, switch tens of thousands of dollars from stock mutual funds into a super-safe money market fund last July, near stocks' peak for the year.
The only person in Maryland's congressional delegation besides Bartlett who owned gold last year was his ideological opposite, Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who has a bad habit of buying investments high and selling them low.
She sold something listed as an M&T Bank Precious Metal Gold Certificate, valued at between $1,001 and $15,000, on April 13, 2007, when gold was $680 an ounce.
Mikulski piled into technology stocks at the peak of the bubble in March 2000 and bought several international stock funds last year, when they were looking pretty pricey.
If it turns out she's back into precious metals this year, it will have been an unmistakable "sell" signal. Gold will fall if the world economy slumps and the inflation threat recedes. Bartlett, however, looks committed to the bright, yellow metal no matter what the price.
jay.hancock@baltsun.com
