But it is one way to store value – and that accounts for its popularity among people who may not get rich quick but manage to avoid becoming poor.

Used cars are another great way to transmute depreciating paper money into a durable asset that – like gold – is portable and fungible (i.e., easily converted into other things of value).

The government has inadvertently created a bull market for them, too.

First, it decreased supply via the infamous "Cash For Clunkers" program (a "clunker" being defined not by mechanical condition, incidentally, but by the car's gas mileage numbers). The government paid people inflated sums of other people's money (an estimated $3 billion) to turn in perfectly roadworthy used cars in for unwarranted, early destruction … in order to "stimulate" demand for new cars.