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Mixed feelings. As much as I’d like to see the US lose its way too dominant position in the global market,
issue more common debt in order to provide investors with an alternative safe asset to gold and US Treasuries
I’m not sure providing investors with another asset to invest in, is the right reason to do it.
Haha, awesome.
I noticed that they mentioned an alternative to gold along with US Treasuries. I’m wondering why gold keeps going up in value when a good chunk of it is in the US and the US is the one causing all this uncertainty. How could I trust the US to keep my gold?
Gold is for all effects and purposes the oldest currency around, mainly because it has been exactly that for millenia and still today, has very little industrial use and instead is mainly used for safekeep of value and decorative purposes (such as jewelery).
Comparied to common currencies of the present age (called fiat currencies because they’re issued by states and their value is not inherent to the currency - i.e. not based on the value of the material of the cash - but rather it’s backed by trust on the issuing government) gold and its value is not under control of any one government hence doesn’t really suffer much from the policies in any one country and has a natural inflation rate of around 2% due to mining (i.e. the amount of mined gold increases by around 2% of the total per year).
So when trust in governments and the economies they manage falls, gold is a natural safe haven asset just like the currency of a different country would be, only gold’s safe haven properties also work when the mistrust is more generalized globally (multiple governments or of governments whose policies have a significant global impact) whilst that doesn’t apply for other fiat currencies. A simple example: if you move from the dollar to the euro and the dollar crashes, the euro will also be somewhat impacted by the consequence of that crash whilst gold would not and if, worse, the societal and political problems causing said crash of the dollar were alse present in the eurozone (which they are, by the way, just less so) there might also be an euro crash for similar reasons and gold would still remain unnafected*
(* actually that’s not quite so because as seen during the 2008 Crash there are price pressures on gold due to on one side people more desperatelly trying to move into it to save their wealth from the crash hence pushing prices up and on the other hand people selling gold to pay for financial commitments they have that cannot be served by other assets that have crashed in value - for example somebody who has stocks and gold and has to pay a loan, during a crash/depression might have to pull money out of gold to pay the loan because the value of the stocks has crashed).
On the other hand, the value of all the gold ever mined in the world is “only” around $28 trillion whilst the US debt alone is $38 trillion, so there’s not enough gold for even just holders of US treasuries to take refuge in it, at least not at the current gold price.
Then again, the more people who take refuse in gold, the more its price goes up - a mere year ago the value of all the gold ever mined in the World would only be around $17.5 trillion - which adds further to the expectation that a dollar crash would push gold prices up massivelly, in multiple currencies rather than just dollars.
I sold my usd a week ago and am avoiding gold for that very reason. Trump always reacts in extreme ways and if the dollar tanks, seizing the world’s us held gold and charging a storage fee, or massive costs to transfer are absolutely on the table.
“We’ve been paying to protect their gold and it’s really, they should be paying us to hold it, it’s been free, American loses billions a year, trillion if you addi tip, just storing it. It’s time they pay. We have it, they want it. Pay us. It’s a really good deal, we could just sell it to someone else. Maybe we will. I hear Russia needs gold.” Or some such nonsense.
Trump always reacts in extreme ways and if the dollar tanks, seizing the world’s us held gold and charging a storage fee, or massive costs to transfer are absolutely on the table.
If that happens, gold will become much more valuable than it is now.
Yeah, a sudden artificial scarcity of gold because the US government is witholding other people’s gold isn’t going to make the price fall, quite the contrary.
That said, best not to invest in Gold that’s physically stored in the US be it directly (you own it and it’s in a US location) or indirectly (such as Gold ETFs whose physical Gold is stored in the US).
Maybe that is why silver is going parabolic? It is outperforming gold at the moment.
Silver spent most of the last 15 years going nowhere, whilst gold has been steadily creeping up (though accelerating in the last 3 or 4 years).
If you look at historical prices, in 20 years gold went up around 9x in dollar terms whilst silver went up 11x, which is not that much of a difference, but if you look at the silver price in the beginning of 2025 it was only about 4x from the beginning of that 20 year range, so most of the growth has happened just in this one year to the point that the peak from 2011 was only surpassed in September 2025 whilst gold passed its 2011 peak in 2020.
All this to say that IMHO Silver price growth just seems to be much more concentrated in time than Gold’s, but in a longer timeframe it doesn’t really add to a much bigger price increase.
Of the us dollar loses value, the government can " print " more to make their payments. That makes it worth less as it devalues and can lead to hyper inflation. All the while, others may dump dollars devaluing it more.
With gold, of it’s price drops, you can just create more out of thin air. There is a set amount. Gold has inherent value as a rare metal, however most of its value currently is due to it’s scarcity making it a good store of value.
They’re already printing more than past administrations. They will keep printing it to patch up whatever breaks. That’s part of why he wants the fed under his control.
Right, I get that scarcity is what makes it a good store of value, but is what I said not a risk worth considering? Is that why price keeps going up? Let’s say an entity decides to dump gold, does the US have any say in whether that can happen or not? Could they?
Sorry for the questions, I’m just genuinely curious/concerned. This is all so complex for my brain.
No, but with the dollar there is the dual risk of dumping and printing. Gold is not ties to any nation or political ideology. If your gold is located in a particular country, it is subject to the risk on the ground, of course, but it can be moved or exchanged relatively easily. Some gold has been doing just that as people shuffle their wealth around.
If the gold isn’t in your physical hands then it still has ties to the nation that it’s stored in and is subject to its politics.
When people buy gold, they buy certificates of ownership. They don’t buy literal hunks of bullion. The gold is still physically in a vault, and a lot of that gold is stored in the US itself. So, what happens if the US says “actually, that gold is ours now”?
The size of $500 worth of gold - about 3.5g - is a small coin or a thin gold ring.
(Thinking of it, it’s actually funny that we’re back to the times of being able to buy a house with a bag of gold coins)
Regular people definitelly buy gold in physical form because it’s such a concentrated form of storing wealth, though in the West this was a lot more common in the old days and currently is a lot more common in countries like China and India.
Oh, and if you buy gold certificates and the certificate issuer goes bankrupt (like so many companies go during Economic Crashes and Depressions), then in the eyes of the law that gold is not yours and you’re just another creditor of the assets of that company, so forget all about getting most of the value of that gold back: you might want to reconsider gold certificates for value safe-keeping outside of the dollar in case of a major economic crash in the US since if the gold isn’t actually in a legal structure were you own it (i.e. you legally have direct ownership of a chunk of gold and pay somebody to store it or store it yourself), you remain totally exposed to whatever economic upheavals happen where that company is based.
Yes, but some have transferred the bullion to holdings in the uk and Germany. And those countries have too.
A lot is in the USA, but not all. Holding an asset, even in a failed country (which is highly unlikely, by the way) is still a viable asset.
The fact that you think the USA could claim privately held assets as government property is precisely why some people want to hold gold rather than cash in an account which can be seized digitally.
What do you mean “holding” an asset? If they aren’t holding it within their borders in their own vaults then it’s just paper. The US can just say “that’s ours now” and steal it, it’s no more a viable asset than the oil being stolen from Venezuela.
Worse, if they pull their gold out too fast it might cause the US to react by locking the vaults anyway.
It’s a rock and a hard place. They fucked up by ever trusting the US.
Are you talking about individuals or states at this point? Or varies for each and I agree, outside their borders, for states, it is riskier. However, they are shuffling their hokdings to manage that risk. As are people, which was my point.
I don’t think they messed up by trusting the US. It was safe and stable for a prolonged period. They fucked up by not recognizing the risk once trump term 1 started.
Who had “crippling deflation on the international exchange markets” in their 2026 bingo cards?
Also, when does this year end? It feels like it has been going on for a decade!
Mate. It’s only been a month 😔
Finally, the solution to crippling inflation!
Just to say, but forex deflation is perfectly compatible with domestic inflation in any country.
Longest month since March 2020.
we have been in the weeks where years happen
I imagine the investerors screaming to themselves “Move stock, NOW!” I don’t truly understand the economic systems, but if it’s like a run on a bank, as seen with Northern Rock in the UK, this will be unrecoverable.
2/3 of global trade is done in US dollars. However a lot of that has currency risk, like say Chinese companies paying their Chinese workers in yuan. So if the dollar looses value compared to other currencies, the old contracts can lead to exporters selling their products for less then they are worth. That is not a good situation to be in for a lot of companies.
In other words Northern Rock would be a joke compared to this.
Hope you’re not planning to rely on selling any stock in the near future!
Well, it depends really: companies whose operations are mostly outside the US whilst being listed in USD in US stockmarkets will see their stockprice go up in dollars is there’s a run on the dollar, not because their value went up but because each dollar is worth less.
So such stocks will actually hold a lot more of their value than it would if that money was held directly in dollars.
PS: I actually have a “funny” Brexit story around this - back when the Leave Referendum won Brexiters (the British MAGA, and as equally well informed as the American version) were celebrating how the UK stockmarket indices went up in value with the Leave Referendum result of Leave. However those indices were only up in pounds and down if quoted in any other currency than the British Pound, because what had happened was that the pound tanked about 20% following the Referendum result so naturaly values for companies with extensive international operations translated to more money in british pounds.
No doubt. We’re looking at another lost decade. Or worse.
“They have a scenario” doesn’t mean it’s likely. No way there is going to be a run on US paper right now
