Remember back not too long ago when every Republican huckster (where Huckabee got his name) was trying to get you to buy gold?

You’ve got Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and everybody on Fox News trying to scare the bejabbers out of all their listeners so they could make a kickback from the gold merchants. They were told that their Yankee dollars would be worthless as half a haircut once Obama killed ‘Merica, but you can always eat gold. No, wait.

Rightwingers were taking every penny they had to buy gold.

Predictably, most of the dealers were as crooked as a corkscrew.

Some more than others.

Here’s a long story about one such organization in Austin. Their deal was that they would buy you gold and for a small fee they would also be kind enough to store it for you in an old bank vault at their offices.

By the time auditors and lawyers got access to Bullion Direct’s 14th-floor offices six weeks ago, there were only a handful of gold and silver coins in an office safe. A second vault it had recently rented held only slightly more.

An estimated $30 million in cash, metal bullion and valuable coins, meanwhile, had vanished.

They hadn’t paid taxes since 2010.

The irony of all this is that the folks buying the gold were also pulling a scam.

Indeed, for a certain percentage of investors, hoarding gold is as much a political statement as an investment. “The beauty of bullion is that it cannot be tracked; it cannot be accounted for,” said Barbala. “It’s called subversive investing. You are subverting the entire U.S. economy. It’s the only, last investment vehicle outside of government control.”

Bullion Direct promoted such light-handed regulation. The company “is not, nor required to be, registered with the SEC since we are not trading securities,” its website promised. “Furthermore, we are not required to register with any other regulatory body.”

Thirty million dollars gone, vanished, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.

Thanks to John for the heads up.