It looks a bit better when you adjust for inflation:

http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/graphic-of-the-day-...

But you're right, not as stable as the US dollar. Still stable enough that people buy it as a store of value though.

I'd say it looks even less stable. Adjusted for inflation, the dips and spikes are much deeper, and people who bought gold in 1980 still haven't made their money back.

Not that it really matters. Right now, people aren't buying it because it's stable. Quite the opposite: People are buying it because the price has been increasing rapidly, and this world is sadly full of individuals who confuse what a thing costs with what a thing is worth, and who have neither the imagination to contemplate the possibility that whatever is happening right now might not keep happening indefinitely, nor the attention span to remember just how quickly and radically it can fail to keep happening indefinitely.

Consider this: just a few short years ago, people were arguing that real estate was a very sound investment. They did so on the grounds that the price of real estate had been increasing rapidly for years, and that everyone else was buying it too.