Quote of the Day
While it is a matter of entrepreneurial judgment and not economic theory to affirm gold’s superiority as the ultimate “store of value” and potentially even as the preferred replacement for fiat monies (though silver has often been a strong competitor to gold for the latter role), I must agree with Lagarde’s assessment of the empirical facts concerning reserve asset competition, not with Powell’s dismissive attitude about gold—when the chips are down and the world is forced to turn to an unconditionally trustworthy reserve of purchasing power, the world will turn to gold. What soaring gold prices might indicate is that the world is now turning to gold.
Vincent Cook
November 28, 2025
Central Bankers Disagree About Gold | Mises Institute
The prices are certainly rising. This is just this year:
I see the staggering of Bitcoin. I see Trump and Elon fail to get the U.S. deficit under control. I see the mounting U.S. debt becoming a huge, unstoppable monster. I wonder if the price of gold reflects a lack of confidence in the U.S. dollar. I think of the Zimbabwe dollar (I have trillions of them). Our country is not Zimbabwe, Argentina, or Venezuela so if someday we do have runaway inflation, it almost for certain will not be on the scale of those countries. But if it does happen, it could happen very rapidly. These events frequently have high emotional content. It is like someone shouted fire in a large room with not enough exits. A lot of people get trampled who would have survived had everyone remain calm.
And, of course, gold may not be the thing that saves people in a stampede. Maybe it will be guns and ammo to defend against the looters searching for food or even, as in the movie Doctor Zhivago, stealing the lumber from your home to burn for warmth.
If you do decide to buy gold, please remember my advice.
Two parts to this price increase.
First, I hear that the Chinese are buying a lot of gold. More demand, same supply, laws of economics still win.
Second, the price of gold in dollars goes up as the value of the dollar goes down. The dollar has, and continues to, digest the inflationary impacts of out-of-control deficit spending.
At a rough approximation, the dollar is worth 20% less than it was just four years ago. It’s not worth having a savings account any more; get those saved dollars into something that you can re-convert back into fresh dollars at full value just before you need to spend them. We’re not at Weimar hyperinflation yet, but you can see it from here.