Precious Metals News & Analysis - Gold News, Silver News from Money Metals Exchange

ETF Gold Holdings Surged to Record High in August

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

Gold flowed into ETFs from every region last month, pushing global holdings to a record high.

ETFs globally added 121 net tonnes of gold to their holdings in August. That pushed total ETF gold reserves to 4,189 tonnes.

Putting that into perspective, ETFs globally held 3,915 tonnes of gold at the height of the COVID bull market.

Total assets under management (AUM) by gold-backed funds rose 16 percent month-on-month to $615 billion in August.

Year-to-date, ETFs have added a net 160 tonnes of gold to their collective holdings valued at $29 billion.

For the second-straight month, European ETFs led the way, adding 54.2 tonnes of gold to their holdings, valued at $7.9 billion. It was the strongest month for European gold ETFs on record.

Like in the U.S., European investors are becoming increasingly worried about government debt loads. According to the World Gold Council, “Against this backdrop, gold's role as a portfolio diversifier and an alternative to sovereign debt likely remained an important driver of demand.”

Funds listed in the UK were the largest contributors to European gold inflows, recording the second-largest month of gold accumulation on record. Meanwhile, French funds added $1.5 billion in August, the strongest month on record. According to the World Gold Council, this “further underscores the breadth of investor demand across the region.”

North American gold-backed funds added 53.3 tonnes of gold to their holdings, valued at $7.7 billion. It was the region’s third-largest monthly inflow on record.

The month started slowly and then accelerated during the week of August 17. According to the World Gold Council, North American funds added more than half of the month’s total gold inflow in just five days.

The spike in gold flows occurred around the same time the U.S. Treasury Department announced plans to double its https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/10/treasury-department-announces-even-bigger-bond-buyback-market-shrugs-005192";>buyback of long-term bonds, an effort widely viewed as an attempt to control borrowing costs. The World Gold Council said this intervention “heightened concerns around fiscal sustainability and dominance, while reviving fears of potential dollar debasement.”

Asian funds charted their strongest month since February, adding 13.3 tonnes of gold valued at $2 billion.

China dominated inflows, thanks to a rebounding gold price that attracted investor interest. According to the World Gold Council, “Continued declines in local government bond yields and a range-bound equity market likely provided additional support.”

Indian and Japanese funds also reported modest gold inflows.

Funds listed in other regions, including Australia and Africa, added 0.4 tonnes of gold in August. The bulk of regional demand was centered in Australia, with $190 million in gold inflows.

ETFs are a convenient way for investors to play the gold market, but https://youtu.be/7aP6VbgXVeM?si=O3yPeFkTYFHOXrHe"; target="_blank" rel="noopener">owning ETF shares is not the same as holding physical gold.

ETFs are relatively liquid. You can buy or sell an ETF with a couple of mouse clicks. You don’t have to worry about transporting or storing metal. In a nutshell, they let investors play the gold market without buying full ounces of metal at the spot price.

Since you are just buying a number on a screen, you can easily trade your ETF shares for another stock or cash whenever you want, even multiple times on the same day. Many speculative investors take advantage of this liquidity.

But while a gold ETF is a convenient way to play gold's price, you don’t possess any gold. You have paper. And you don’t know for sure that the fund has all the gold either, especially when it sees inflows. In such a scenario, there have been difficulties or delays in obtaining physical metal.

Trading Volumes

Gold market activity rebounded in August, with average daily trading volumes rising 21 percent month-on-month to $430 billion per day across all major market segments.

Over-the-counter (OTC) trading volumes rose 10 percent on the month to $226 billion per day. LBMA activity supported OTC trading, with an 11 percent month-on-month increase to $199 billion per day. This is well above the 2025 average.

Total COMEX longs rose sharply by 39 percent to 753 tonnes.

Managed money continued rebuilding its position, with net longs increasing by 96 tonnes. This pushed managed money net longs to 470 tonnes, surpassing its earlier year-to-date peak of 443 tonnes.

Treasury Department Announces Even Bigger Bond Buyback; Market Shrugs

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

That seems to be the mantra over at the U.S. Treasury Department.

On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the department plans to triple its long-term bond buyback program to $6 billion during its operation on Thursday.

Last month, Bessent signaled that the Treasury would increase its bond market intervention. Initially, he said the plan was to “at least” double operations from $2 billion to $4 billion beginning in September. Yields initially fell but quickly recovered.

Not content to be outdone by the markets, Bessent doubled down again, raising the September 10 buyback operation to $6 billion.

I doubt this is what he had in mind.

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By Thursday morning, the yield on the 10-year Treasury had spiked to over 4.9 percent, a level not seen since June 2007.

Meanwhile, the 30-year yield spiked to 5.341. You have to go back to June 2004 to find a yield that high.

Subsequently, mortgage rates also spiked, climbing to the highest level since July 2025.

Mechanics and Optics of the Treasury Buyback

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In practice, the Treasury will purchase older long-term bonds on the open market and retire them. This increased demand will raise prices and lower yields. This benefits the federal government by lowering interest rates on newly issued debt on the long end of the curve.

The Treasury will fund the buybacks by selling shorter-term notes and bonds. In practice, the Treasury borrows money to buy debt from people who already lent it money so it can borrow more money from other people at a slightly lower interest rate.

This is imperative given that the federal government already https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/13/trump-administration-runs-largest-monthly-budget-deficit-in-five-years-005135";>shells out over $1 trillion annually in interest expense.

In the big scheme of things, this isn’t a big operation. Six billion dollars is a drop in the bucket in a $32 trillion bond market. Treasury describes the operation as a “liquidity intervention” to maintain “market plumbing.” However, we don’t have a “plumbing” problem, and the Treasury Department intervention doesn’t solve the fundamental issue.

But while the operation's extent isn’t materially significant, the message Bessent sent with the move is.

And what is that message?

Desperation.

The Treasury Department is worried about the state of the bond market and its ability to continue funding the federal government's borrow-and-spend binge.

That's because demand for U.S. debt has tanked, and investors are demanding higher long-term yields due to ever-increasing federal deficits and inflation expectations.

After Bessent initially announced the increased buyback operation, Standard Chartered global head of research Eric Robertsen summed up the Treasury Department's message to the markets.

"The only conclusion we can draw is ‌that yields reached a level that they don't like, and I think that suggests a willingness to try and control or intervene against natural supply and demand."

PGIM Credit chief investment strategist, Robert Tipp, told CNBC the markets seemed disappointed that the Treasury didn’t make an even bigger move.

“At the end of the day, the Treasury is issuing a spectacular amount of securities, and they’re trying to control the price level at the back end of the curve with really what, in the big scheme of things, is not necessarily a major operation. When they came out and said we would be buying at least 4 billion, I think market expectations were kind of thinking six to 10, and they’ve come in at the bottom end of the market’s expectations. As a result, you’re seeing a negative reaction here in the market with the sell-off at the back end of the curve.”

Stanley Druckenmiller said Bessent is setting his feet on a slippery slope. Now that he’s intervened, it may well require increasingly larger buybacks just to keep a lid on the market.

“Once markets believe Treasury is defending a price, every rise in yields becomes a test of official resolve, and the operations must grow to survive the tests. Governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose. The only variable is how much they spend before conceding.”

Bessent defended his plans to “make the bond market move” during a speech earlier this week. According to the New York Times, he argued that markets were “misreading the fundamental dynamics of the U.S. economy,” noting that American bonds had outperformed the bond markets of many other countries. He emphasized that his job was to ensure markets were "not misreading the fundamental dynamics of the economy."

“Now I try to slow things down, to get people to get out of their fever dream and look at the facts.”

However, the facts (https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/20/the-40-trillion-national-debt-in-perspective-005151";>about $40 trillion of them) are exactly why people are turning their noses up at U.S. debt. They don't trust the U.S. will ever get a handle on its fiscal malfeasance. So, why should the world lend Uncle Sam any more money?

On top of that, they've watched America https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/02/29/could-weaponization-of-the-dollar-as-a-foreign-policy-billy-club-accelerate-de-dollarization-003013";>weaponize its currency. Many countries worry that the U.S. government could use its dollar assets as leverage. If you want to avoid getting the dollar carpet pulled out from under you, get the carpet out of the living room.

Impact on Precious Metals

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The Treasury Department's willingness to intentionally step in to suppress yields is bullish for gold and silver.

Since gold is a non-yielding asset, conventional wisdom holds that a higher rate environment is bearish for the yellow metal. Conversely, lower rates tend to create headwinds for gold.

The gold market reacted as one might expect. Gold soared on the news, https://www.moneymetals.com/gold-price";>pushing back above $4,400 an ounce on Wednesday.

Silver also charted a strong gain, rising above $67 an ounce.

Right now, the optics of this operation matter more than the scope. If markets take the Treasury at face value and interpret this as a plumbing fix, it's unlikely to have significant impacts. However, if markets read between the lines and recognize it as transparent rate manipulation to control federal government buying costs, we could see a more significant pivot toward precious metals.

Debasement Trade Gains Ground as Nations Reassess Dollars, Bonds, and Gold

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

In this week’s Money Metals Midweek Memo, host Mike Maharrey examined what he calls the debasement trade. It is the growing preference for tangible assets such as gold and silver as protection against the declining purchasing power of fiat currencies.

Maharrey framed the trend as a matter of trust. If people no longer trust the institutions managing their money, he argued, they will naturally seek assets that are not created or controlled by those institutions. Gold and silver have historically filled that role because they are not issued by governments and https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/05/brien-lundin-debt-debasement-and-why-golds-bull-market-has-support-005186";>carry no direct currency-debasement risk.

The underlying question, according to Maharrey, is not whether governments will continue to borrow and spend, but how long markets will tolerate the consequences.

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A Gold Bull Market With No Clear Off-Ramp

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Maharrey said he is generally reluctant to put a timetable on major market events. Fiscal and monetary problems often take longer to manifest than people expect, even when the broad direction is clear.

Still, he highlighted comments from John LaForge, chief alternative investment strategist at Ned Davis Research, who linked https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/01/a-forever-gold-bull-market-005174";>the outlook for gold to governments’ willingness, or unwillingness, to confront their debt burdens.

LaForge said gold prices could continue rising until policymakers learn how to address the debt problem. As long as governments continue piling up debt rather than paying it down, he argued, higher gold prices remain possible.

Maharrey’s interpretation was straightforward. The debt trend is a https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/03/the-feds-no-exit-ramp-debt-dollar-debasement-and-the-case-for-gold-005179";>powerful long-term tailwind for gold. With U.S. national debt near $40 trillion and politicians facing incentives to avoid painful fiscal reforms, he argued that the political system is more likely to keep postponing the problem than resolve it.

That does not mean every move in gold will be higher. Maharrey acknowledged that precious metals can be volatile and can experience sharp corrections. But he maintained that continued currency depreciation and unresolved debt problems create a long-term backdrop favorable to gold and silver.

Norway’s $80 Billion Treasury Signal

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One recent development cited in the episode came from Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest. The fund oversees roughly $2.3 trillion in assets accumulated from Norway’s oil and gas wealth.

The fund has proposed reducing government bonds from 70% to 50% of its broader bond benchmark. Maharrey said that, in practical terms, the move could require the fund to shed approximately https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/08/worlds-largest-sovereign-wealth-fund-to-cut-us-treasury-holdings-005188";>$80 billion in U.S. Treasury holdings, along with around $20 billion in Japanese government bonds and a reduction in euro-area government debt.

The shift is intended to preserve sufficient liquidity for periods of market stress. The transactions are not expected immediately. Maharrey noted reports suggesting they may not occur until early 2027. Nevertheless, he described the announcement as an important signal from a major global investor that government bonds are no longer being treated as unquestioned safe havens.

He also cautioned against interpreting the decision as evidence of an imminent dollar collapse. Citing Vantage Point Asset Management CIO Nick Ferres, Maharrey noted that unsustainable debt and deficits are widespread across advanced economies, but a shift by Norway’s fund does not necessarily mean a financial crisis is arriving tomorrow.

Bond Bear Market Pressures Build

Maharrey argued that Norway’s decision fits into a broader shift in the bond market. For decades, U.S. Treasury debt served as a primary safe asset for governments, banks, and institutional investors. But persistent deficits, inflation concerns, rising borrowing needs, and policy uncertainty have put pressure on that role.

He pointed to the 10-year Treasury yield, which rose from roughly 1.5% in late 2021 to nearly 5% in fall 2023. Despite Federal Reserve rate cuts and geopolitical events that traditionally might have pushed investors toward Treasuries, https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/31/fed-chair-warsh-runs-open-mouth-operations-at-jackson-hole-but-can-he-deliver-005173";>yields have remained elevated.

Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions. When investors demand less government debt, bond prices fall, and yields rise. Higher yields, in turn, increase the government’s borrowing costs.

Maharrey said this creates a feedback loop for Washington. The government must borrow heavily to fund deficits, yet higher interest rates make servicing existing debt more expensive, requiring still more borrowing.

Through the first 10 months of fiscal 2026, he said, U.S. interest expense reached $1.17 trillion, up 15.5% from the same period in fiscal 2025. That followed a 7.3% increase in fiscal 2025 interest costs compared with 2024.

He also discussed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s long-end bond buyback effort, intended to support 10-year, 20-year, and 30-year bonds and ease upward pressure on yields. Maharrey argued that the market response was short-lived and that the move may have instead highlighted official concern about the bond market.

Dollar Weaponization and Foreign Demand

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Debt is not the only reason overseas institutions are reassessing their exposure to dollars and Treasuries. Maharrey said the United States and its allies freezing Russian dollar-denominated assets after Russia invaded Ukraine accelerated concerns about the weaponization of reserve currencies.

He did not debate the policy merits of sanctions. Instead, he focused on their consequences for countries holding reserves abroad. Governments that see the dollar used as a tool of economic pressure may decide to diversify away from dollar assets, he said.

Maharrey cited China as an example. According to figures mentioned in the episode, China had reduced its Treasury holdings to $652.3 billion, its lowest level since September 2008.

This does not mean the dollar will lose its reserve-currency role overnight. But Maharrey argued that diversification away from Treasuries, increased central-bank gold buying, and more interest in alternative reserve assets all point in the same direction. That is a gradual reduction in reliance on U.S. debt.

Netherlands Moves 86 Tonnes of Gold

The episode also examined the https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/03/the-netherlands-moves-gold-out-of-north-america-citing-geopolitical-risk-005181";>Netherlands’ recent gold relocation. De Nederlandsche Bank, or DNB, moved approximately 86 metric tonnes of gold from North America to London between March and August 2026, citing rising geopolitical unrest and a desire to strengthen crisis preparedness.

The move was not a simple shipment of all the metal. DNB sold about 59 tonnes of gold stored in New York and used the proceeds to purchase replacement bullion in London. More than 27 tonnes were physically transferred from the United States and Canada to Zeist in the Netherlands, while a similar quantity was moved from Zeist to London.

DNB said the relocation improved the tradability and accessibility of its reserves. After the change, London held 32.1% of Dutch gold reserves, while both New York and Ottawa held 18.5%. The https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/03/central-banks-piled-in-more-gold-in-july-005182";>central bank’s total gold holdings remained unchanged at 612.4 tonnes.

Maharrey emphasized the role of counterparty risk. Gold itself does not depend on another party’s promise to pay, but gold stored abroad can still create custody and access risks. In a crisis, the location, form, and market acceptability of bullion can matter.

London’s role as a major physical gold-trading center was central to DNB’s decision. Gold stored at the Bank of England meets modern international trading standards and can be accessed or traded more readily in a crisis than some older bars held elsewhere.

Gold Repatriation Is a Wider Trend

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The Netherlands is not alone. Maharrey noted that France recently replaced non-standard gold bars previously held in New York with new bars meeting international reserve standards, with the upgraded bullion retained in France.

Germany repatriated 674 tonnes of gold from Paris and New York beginning in 2013, though the Bundesbank still stores roughly one-third of its reserves in New York. Calls for further repatriation have continued in Germany amid concerns about geopolitical risk and strategic independence.

India has also been actively bringing gold home. Maharrey said the Reserve Bank of India repatriated 100 tonnes from the United Kingdom in spring 2024, followed by another 104 tonnes. India now reportedly holds about 680 tonnes of its 880-tonne gold reserve, or roughly 77%, within its own borders.

The broader trend is https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/06/25/more-countries-bringing-their-gold-home-for-safe-keeping-005009";>reflected in central-bank vaulting preferences. Maharrey cited World Gold Council survey data showing that 57% of surveyed central banks held some gold in the United Kingdom, down from 64% a year earlier. Domestic vaulting was preferred by 49%, while the share holding at least some gold in New York fell from 17% to 14%.

Preparing for a Long-Term Currency Trend

Maharrey’s central conclusion was that https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/27/gold-and-silver-surge-as-the-debasement-trade-returns-005164";>the debasement trade is driven by long-term fiscal and monetary incentives, not a single administration or a short-lived political cycle.

He argued that governments have committed themselves to inflation targets that steadily erode purchasing power, and that actual inflation may exceed those targets when deficits and debt-service costs become harder to manage.

For investors and savers, Maharrey said the challenge is preparation rather than market timing. Waiting until a financial crisis is obvious, he argued, is like buying fire insurance after a house has already caught fire.

The episode closed with Maharrey’s view that gold and silver can help investors diversify away from fiat-currency risk. He encouraged listeners to research precious-metals options through MoneyMetals.com or by speaking with a Money Metals specialist at 1-800-800-1865.

Gold or Dollars? It's a Question of Trust!

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

The debasement trade continues to gain momentum with more countries and investors spurning dollars for gold.

It's a question of trust.

Do you trust dollars, or gold?

As host Mike Maharrey explains, more people are losing faith in fiat dollars, and they're turning to the yellow metal as a safe haven for their wealth. In this episode of the Midweek Memo podcast, Mike highlights two stories that broke last week, illustrating the whats and whys behind the debasement trade.

First, he covers the world's largest sovereign wealth fund announcing a reduction in Treasury holdings. He follows that up by highlighting another example of gold repatriation.

Along the way, he makes the case for a "forever" gold bull market.

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Mike opens the show with a hypothetical scenario.

"So, you’re chatting with a trusted friend, and he tells you about how he discovered his accountant was cheating him and embezzling funds. And oh, by the way, he’s your accountant too.

"So, how long would it be before you fired him?

"Probably about as long as it took to dial the number, right? If you can’t trust somebody, you are not going to keep them in a position where they can harm you. A cheating accountant is bad, but not so bad for you if he’s not YOUR accountant.

"This very phenomenon explains the debasement trade."

What exactly is the debasement trade?

"Simply put, it’s an investment strategy emphasizing holding tangible assets such as gold, silver, and other commodities to protect against the decline of fiat currencies caused by monetary debasement. In other words, getting rid of dollars because you don’t trust the government issuing those dollars and stacking gold and silver because nobody issues or controls it, and you know it will always hedge against fiat currency debasement."

Mike notes that people sometimes ask him how long he thinks the gold bull market will continue.

"If you know me, you know I’m not one to try to time things. I recognize trends, and I feel like I have a good grasp on where we’re going, but I always admit it’s not clear exactly how or when we’ll get there. But I ran across a forecast the other day that I have to admit makes sense."

He quotes an analyst who argues the gold bull market will continue until "we learn how to deal with the debt situation."

"So, Forever. Given that nobody is willing to do what it takes to 'deal with the debt situation,' gold prices will ostensibly go up forever, or until the fiat system finally implodes."

Mike explains that there is no viable off-ramp, and this is the root of the debasement trade.

"Remember – there’s a growing lack of trust. People don’t trust the U.S. to handle its fiscal problems, so they’re trying to figure out how to be clear of the mess when the house of cards falls down. One of the things they’re doing is limiting their exposure to U.S. debt. In other words, they’re increasingly saying, 'Yeah. We’re not loaning your drunk uncle any more money.'"

As an example, Mike points out that the World's largest sovereign wealth fund recently announced plans to lower its exposure to government bonds. In practice, this means it will divest a large amount of U.S. Treasuries.

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Mike called the move "yet another body blow" to the struggling bond market, noting that many analysts believe we are in https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/07/18/the-ramifications-of-a-long-term-bond-bear-market-005079";>the early stages of a long-term secular bear market in bonds.

Mike sets the Norwegian wealth fund's move in a broader context.

"For decades, governments and central banks have held U.S. government debt as a “safe” asset. That is starting to shift because many governments no longer view U.S. debt as 'safe.' They are concerned about the U.S.’s fiscal position, with https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/07/16/us-government-runs-another-big-deficit-in-june-as-interest-expense-climbs-005073";>constant deficit spending piling onto nearly $40 trillion in debt, along with the https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/02/29/could-weaponization-of-the-dollar-as-a-foreign-policy-billy-club-accelerate-de-dollarization-003013";>weaponization of the dollar. Notably, de-dollarization went into overdrive after the U.S. and its Western allies froze Russia's dollar-denominated assets after the invasion of Ukraine."

Mike points out that this has significant ramifications, and the U.S. government is signaling that it's a big problem. Mike specifically notes https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/20/us-treasury-intervenes-in-bond-market-to-drive-yields-lower-005150";>the Treasury Department's recent bond buyback announcement, characterizing it as a sign of "desperation" as the federal government wrestles with the growing burden of interest expense on the $40 trillion debt.

After pointing out special pricing on Australian gold Kangaroo coins at Money Metals, Mike highlights a second aspect of the debasement trade - gold repatriation.

"So, not only are a lot of countries shedding dollars and adding gold – they are bringing their gold home. The Netherlands moved approximately 86 tonnes of gold valued at over €10 billion from North America to London, citing 'increasing geopolitical unrest' and a desire to 'strengthen crisis preparedness.'"

Mike notes that, based on the DNB’s statement, worries about access to its gold were a primary reason for the move. He also points out that even countries with historically friendly relations, like the Netherlands, are beginning to judge the U.S. as a political risk. He cites France and India as two other countries aggressively repatriating gold, while people across the political spectrum in countries including Germany and Italy are pushing to return their gold to their own countries.

Mike wraps up the show by pointing out that the reasons many countries are spurning dollars for gold are also valid to individual investors. He urges listeners to call 800-800-1865 and talk with a precious metals specialist today.

Articles Mentioned in the Show

https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/01/a-forever-gold-bull-market-005174";>A Forever Gold Bull Market?

https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/03/central-banks-piled-in-more-gold-in-july-005182";>Central Banks Piled in More Gold in July

Gold and Silver Take a Hit — Then Fight Back

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

Gold and silver investors got another reminder over the past few days that bull markets rarely move straight up.

After a strong run for several weeks, both metals were hit with a sharp selloff Friday. Gold https://www.moneymetals.com/gold-price";>dropped more than 2% at one point, while silver also came under heavy selling pressure.

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But the more interesting story may be what happened next.

Buyers quickly emerged as prices fell. Gold bounced well off its lows, while silver also https://www.moneymetals.com/silver-price";>recovered and has continued to hold up relatively well. As trading gets underway this week, neither metal looks as though Friday's selloff did serious damage to the broader advance.

Gold is currently trading around the $4,400 level after recently challenging $4,500. That's still an extraordinary price by historical standards — and not far removed from the record territory gold has been exploring this year.

Silver's performance may be even more noteworthy.

The white metal bottomed at $54 this summer and is now trading in the mid-$60s.

The next hurdle appears to be around $67.50. If silver can decisively push through that area, it's likely to move higher and begin outperforming gold again.

Friday's selloff was triggered by a stronger-than-expected employment report. Traders immediately concluded that the Federal Reserve may be more inclined to raise interest rates, and gold and silver were sold aggressively.

But markets often overreact to the latest headline.

What matters now is whether Friday marked the beginning of a larger retreat or simply shook some speculative money out of a market that had moved a long way in a relatively short period.

So far, the evidence points more toward the latter.

Gold has found buyers around the $4,400 area, while silver continues to display impressive resilience. Neither metal has given back anything close to the gains accumulated during the broader advance.

It's also worth remembering just how much the precious metals landscape has changed.

Gold above $4,000 is no longer shocking. Silver above $60 is no longer shocking. Price levels that would have seemed almost unimaginable a couple of years ago are now where buyers and sellers battle over relatively ordinary daily moves.

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That tells us something important.

Investors around the world are continuing to rethink how much confidence they want to place in paper currencies, government debt, and the financial system more broadly. Central banks have been accumulating enormous quantities of gold. Investment demand for physical metals remains strong. And silver faces the added pressure of heavy industrial consumption alongside growing investor interest.

Those forces don't disappear because gold falls $100 in a morning.

In fact, sharp corrections are normal — and arguably healthy — https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/05/brien-lundin-debt-debasement-and-why-golds-bull-market-has-support-005186";>during powerful bull markets. They discourage excessive speculation and give longer-term buyers opportunities to enter at lower prices.

That doesn't mean investors should expect an immediate return to record highs. Gold and silver could spend some time consolidating after their recent gains.

But after Friday's gut check, the bulls are still standing.

Gold is holding near $4,400. Silver remains in the mid-$60s. And if buyers continue showing up on weakness, the next question may soon shift from how far the metals could fall to when they will make another run at their recent highs.

World's Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund to Cut U.S. Treasury Holdings

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

The bloodbath in the bond market keeps picking up speed along with https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/07/28/with-bonds-struggling-investors-turning-to-tangible-assets-like-gold-005096";>the debasement trade.

Last week, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund announced a plan to slash its government bond holdings by about 20 percent.

"We recommend that the government subindex of the bond index be reduced from 70 percent to 50 percent," Norges Bank governor Ida Wolden Bache and Norges Bank IM CEO Nicolai Tangen wrote in a letter.

"A government share of 50 percent will be ‌sufficient to ⁠cover the liquidity needs, including in periods of turbulence in financial markets."

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) was founded in the early 1990s to invest Norway’s oil and gas wealth. It holds about $2.3 trillion in its portfolio.

U.S. Treasuries make up the bulk of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund bond holdings. According to Reuters, the fund will need to shed about $80 billion in Treasury holdings to accomplish its goal.

The fund will also reportedly divest around $20 billion in Japanese bonds and decrease holdings of euro-area bonds as well.

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund did not announce a timeline for the move, but The Business Standard reported the transactions won’t likely occur until early 2027.

The announcement was yet another body blow to the struggling bond market. Many analysts believe we are in https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/07/18/the-ramifications-of-a-long-term-bond-bear-market-005079";>the early stages of a long-term secular bear market in bonds.

Over the last couple of years, long-term bond yields have faced persistent upward pressure. The 10-year Treasury spiked in 2022, rising from around 1.5 percent in late 2021 to a high of nearly 5 percent in the fall of 2023. Since then, yields have remained at those elevated levels despite the Fed cutting rates and geopolitical events that would have historically created significant safe-haven demand for Treasuries.

Reuters recently reported that “inflation, heavy government borrowing, policy uncertainty and bouts of stocks and bonds falling in tandem have weakened bonds' role as a ballast, prompting some investors to look for more diversification.”

The NBIM’s announcement is part of a broader trend as more people lose faith in government finances.

For decades, governments and central banks have held U.S. government debt as a “safe” asset. That is starting to shift because many governments no longer view U.S. debt as “safe.” They are concerned about the U.S.’s fiscal position, with https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/07/16/us-government-runs-another-big-deficit-in-june-as-interest-expense-climbs-005073";>constant deficit spending piling onto nearly $40 trillion in debt, along with the https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/02/29/could-weaponization-of-the-dollar-as-a-foreign-policy-billy-club-accelerate-de-dollarization-003013";>weaponization of the dollar. Notably, de-dollarization went into overdrive after the U.S. and its Western allies froze Russia's dollar-denominated assets after the invasion of Ukraine.

A Massif Capital note pointed out that many foreign government buyers have been slowly selling U.S. Treasuries over the last several years.

“Players like China are changing their approach and have been doing so for several years. China recently reduced its holdings to $652.3 billion, the lowest level since September 2008.”

Higher yields inherent in a bond bear market are already squeezing U.S. policymakers.

So far in fiscal 2026, https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/13/trump-administration-runs-largest-monthly-budget-deficit-in-five-years-005135";>the U.S. Treasury has spent $1.17 trillion on interest expense. That was up 15.5 percent compared to the same period in fiscal ’25. Interest on the national debt cost $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2025. That was up 7.3 percent over 2024.

Simply put, the federal government can’t afford higher interest rates.

In an effort to stop the bleeding, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/20/us-treasury-intervenes-in-bond-market-to-drive-yields-lower-005150";>a bond buyback at the long end of the yield curve.

It worked.

For about one day.

Vantage Point Asset Management CIO Nick Ferres told the Financial Post that “Debt and deficits are unsustainable in most of the advanced economies.” However, he cautioned against reading too much into Norway’s recent announcement.

“At some point there will be a fiscal crisis; however, this development is not necessarily a signal of that today.”

Indians Ignore Government Pleas to Stop Buying Gold

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

Last spring, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Indians to put off buying gold for a year.

They apparently didn’t heed the advice.

The Titan Company reported a 63 percent profit increase in the second quarter and a notable increase in foot traffic. And according to the Financial Times, “jewelry accounts for the vast majority of the chain’s earnings.”

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Modi wants Indians to forgo gold to control the country’s trade deficit, which is putting pressure on the rupee.

Gold and silver make up around 11 percent of India’s total imports.

Meanwhile, oil accounts for around 22 percent of the nation's imports. The sudden spike in oil prices due to the U.S.-Iran war hit India particularly hard. The country imports nearly 85 percent of its fuel, and about 50 percent of its crude imports flow through the Strait of Hormuz.

With both gold and oil prices spiking, India’s import bill has exploded. The country’s merchandise trade deficit topped $330 billion in the financial year ending March 2026. That was up from over $280 billion a year ago, a 17.9 percent increase.

The trade situation has put significant downward pressure on the rupee.

To try to stem the flow of gold into the country, https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/05/13/india-hikes-gold-and-silver-import-duties-to-support-rupee-004917";>the government hiked customs duties from 6 to 15 percent in May, along with Modi’s plea to stop buying gold.

Titan managing director Ajoy Chawla called the impact of those measures “not long-lasting.”

“Their love for the product and gold is there; that is not disappearing. They are looking at it as a store of asset value. Even for a person who is not necessarily planning to sell their jewelry ever, they look at it as a portfolio.”

The data bears Chawla out.

After two straight weak months, https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/20/india-gold-market-showing-signs-of-recovery-005152";>gold imports doubled in July, rising from 20 tonnes in June to an estimated 40-45 tonnes, signaling stronger demand.

The World Gold Council (WGC) reported improving Indian jewelry demand in July.

“Industry feedback suggests that deferred purchases returned to the market, resulting in higher footfall and a recovery in demand beyond essential wedding-related purchases. Manufacturers have reportedly begun receiving higher order flows, and inventory replenishment by jewelers has picked up ahead of the festive season, suggesting growing confidence in seasonal demand.”

Indian jewelry sales jumped by about one-third year-on-year to $21 billion in Q2, according to WGC data. Indian jewelry merchants reported strong quarterly earnings, with revenue growth from 30 to 60 percent year-on-year. Religious festivals and the summer wedding season supported gold jewelry sales in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, Modi reiterated his appeal last week, asking Indians to avoid buying gold “if not necessary.”

Apparently, a lot of Indians find it necessary.

In fact, Indians love gold for both cultural and economic reasons.

The yellow metal is deeply interwoven into India’s marriage ceremonies, along with its religious and cultural rituals. Festival seasons typically boost gold demand.

Indians also value the yellow metal as a store of wealth, especially in poorer rural regions. Around two-thirds of India’s gold demand originates outside urban centers, where many people operate outside the tax system. A lot of Indians use gold jewelry not only as an adornment but as a way to preserve wealth.

In the West, gold is generally viewed as a luxury item.

Not in India. Even poor Indians buy gold.

According to a 2018 ICE360 survey, one in every two households in India had purchased gold within the last five years. Overall, 87 percent of Indian households own some gold. Even households at the lowest income levels in India hold some of the yellow metal. According to the survey, more than 75 percent of families in the bottom 10 percent of income managed to buy some gold.

Given the Indian love affair with gold, it’s not surprising that Modi’s pleas fell on deaf ears.

Last May, Metals Focus predicted the higher tax, and government begging would only have a limited impact on the Indian gold market.

That’s because Indian gold and silver demand historically remained resilient, even in a higher-tax environment.

According to Metals Focus analysts, “Consumers often delay purchases initially following sharp price increases but typically adjust to higher price levels over time. In addition, elevated duties could encourage a recovery in unofficial flows, which had collapsed following the 2024 duty reduction.”

In fact, as the rupee depreciates, gold will likely become increasingly attractive.

Brien Lundin: Debt, Debasement, and Why Gold’s Bull Market Has Support

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

In a recent Money Metals Podcast interview, host Mike Maharrey spoke with https://www.google.com/search?q=Brien+F.+Lundin&;amp;biw=1728&bih=962&sca_esv=8366ebc584332cb8&sxsrf=APpeQnti_RQuwPms3f2Zs4MnGn5LQcNSIA%3A1788545677840&ei=jQqbavzpMvfKp84P9_O24QU&ved=2ahUKEwi85Kruw9WWAxV35ckDHfe5LVwQ4dUDegQIBhAM&uact=5&oq=Brien+F.+Lundin&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiD0JyaWVuIEYuIEx1bmRpbjIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRigAUjgN1DZBVjqJnABeACQAQCYAYABoAGsBaoBAzQuM7gBA8gBAPgBAZgCCKACyQXCAgsQABiABBiiBBiwA8ICCBAAGO8FGLADwgIFEAAY7wXCAggQABiABBiiBMICBBAAGB7CAggQABgIGAcYHsICBxAAGIAEGA3CAgYQABgeGA3CAggQABgFGB4YDZgDAIgGAZAGBZIHAzQuNKAH0xqyBwMzLjS4B8cFwgcFMS41LjLIBxCACAE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brien Lundin, editor of The Gold Newsletter and CEO of the New Orleans Investment Conference, about the outlook for gold and silver amid swelling federal debt, rising Treasury yields, Federal Reserve policy, and what Lundin views as the return of the “debasement trade.”

Lundin said the central question is not whether officials can talk tough on inflation, but whether the math permits a sustained tightening campaign. With https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/20/the-40-trillion-national-debt-in-perspective-005151";>U.S. federal debt above $40 trillion and the debt trajectory steepening, he argued that the country cannot simply “grow its way out” of the problem.

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The Limits of Rate Hikes

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Maharrey asked why Lundin considers expectations of aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes under Chair Kevin Warsh to be misplaced. Lundin said Warsh may sincerely want to fight inflation, but that https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/20/40-trillion-debt-black-hole-is-a-financial-crisis-coming-005149";>the size of today’s debt burden severely limits the Fed’s options.

He contrasted the current situation with the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Paul Volcker could raise interest rates dramatically to combat inflation. At that time, Lundin said, federal debt stood near 35 percent of GDP. Today, he put the figure closer to 135 percent of GDP.

That difference changes everything. Higher rates increase the government’s debt-service burden, and Lundin said rate increases now have far greater leverage on an already heavily indebted economy. He believes Warsh may be able to https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/31/fed-chair-warsh-runs-open-mouth-operations-at-jackson-hole-but-can-he-deliver-005173";>deliver a symbolic quarter-point hike, but a sustained campaign of increases is effectively impossible.

Why Debt Points Toward Debasement

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Lundin rejected the suggestion that the United States can solve its debt problem through economic growth alone. He said only an extraordinary, unforeseeable leap in productivity—such as unlimited energy or interstellar travel—would make that plausible.

Absent that, Lundin argued that governments historically resort to debasing their underlying currencies https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/09/03/the-feds-no-exit-ramp-debt-dollar-debasement-and-the-case-for-gold-005179";>when debt becomes too large to manage through normal fiscal means. He said the “debasement trade,” a term popularized on Wall Street, is again https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/27/gold-and-silver-surge-as-the-debasement-trade-returns-005164";>becoming a major force in markets.

Maharrey agreed that the debt issue has been discussed for decades, including during the 1990s and the “Contract with America” era. But both men noted that debt has compounded dramatically since then, while policymakers have shown little willingness to impose the political pain necessary to reverse the trend.

Treasury Buybacks Sent a Message

The discussion also turned to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s decision https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/25/bessents-bond-market-intervention-juices-debasement-trade-boosts-gold-005161";>to increase long-end bond buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion. Lundin acknowledged that the increase was technically small in the context of a bond market worth more than $30 trillion.

Still, he said the market’s reaction was understandable. The move suggested that the Treasury was willing to influence yields at one end of the curve and could be prepared to intervene further if necessary.

Lundin argued that the effort was not technically yield-curve control, but it nevertheless revealed an inclination to manage yields. In his view, the Treasury’s attempt to project strength instead signaled weakness and desperation.

Gold reportedly jumped about $180 in response. Stocks, bonds, gold, and silver all initially rallied, but Lundin said equities faded as the day went on while gold and silver continued to advance.

Gold and Bonds Are Seeing the Same Danger

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One of Lundin’s most important observations was the positive correlation between gold and the 10-year Treasury yield since late June. Ordinarily, higher yields are often viewed as negative for non-yielding gold. But Lundin said today’s relationship is different.

He argued that yields are rising not because of strong economic growth or normal monetary tightening, but because investors are increasingly concerned about debt and deficits. Bond investors, often described as bond vigilantes, are demanding greater returns to hold sovereign debt while also turning to gold as a hedge.

Lundin said gold and bonds are among the most sensitive predictive mechanisms in financial markets. Their behavior, he argued, suggests markets may be anticipating a future crisis, even if no one can identify the precise trigger in advance.

Complacency and the Debt Endgame

Lundin cautioned against predicting the exact date of a financial breaking point. He said many respected analysts have warned of a debt crisis for 30 years or more, and the system has continued operating.

But he also stressed that complacency can be dangerous. Drawing on his experience near Lake Pontchartrain before Hurricane Katrina, Lundin recalled noticing inadequate efforts to reinforce levees only months before the storm devastated New Orleans.

For Lundin, the debt situation carries a similar lesson. A risk can remain ignored for years until an event exposes the vulnerability all at once. He believes the U.S. may be in the endgame of more than https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/24/its-real-and-you-need-to-be-ready-for-it-005159";>45 years of increasingly easy money and expanding debt, though he does not claim to know exactly how long that endgame will last.

Rising Yields Do Not Automatically Hurt Gold

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Maharrey asked Lundin about the conventional belief that higher interest rates and rising yields are always negative for gold. Lundin said that view is historically incomplete.

Some of gold’s strongest advances since the metal became investable after 1971—and especially after the United States permitted private gold ownership again in 1974—occurred during periods of rising rates and yields. During the 1970s, yields rose to fight inflation, but they did not keep up with inflation, allowing gold to rise.

Today, Lundin sees a different version of the same dynamic. Yields are rising because debt and deficits have become more ominous, not because the economy is necessarily strong. He added that this is a global phenomenon, with sovereign yields around the world moving sharply higher.

Lundin said he watches the price of gold more closely than the dollar index. In his view, all fiat currencies are competing against one another while depreciating over time, making gold a more meaningful measuring stick.

A Long-Term Tailwind for Gold and Silver

Lundin said he expects the macroeconomic trend to remain supportive of gold and silver until governments resolve their debt and fiat-currency problems. However, he cautioned that a bull market does not move in a straight line.

He said the first 18 months of the current metals bull market were unusually forgiving, with corrections largely playing out through sideways consolidation rather than steep price declines. As Western investors and algorithmic trading play a larger role, he expects more volatility and sharper headline-driven corrections.

For physical precious metals holders, Lundin said the larger question is whether they can afford not to own gold or silver when cash savings may lose purchasing power over time. For mining-stock investors, he emphasized the importance of buying dips during a bull market and taking some profits when markets become excessively frothy.

The Next Crisis May Come From the Unexpected

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Lundin said he believes gold and bonds may be “sniffing out” the next major financial crisis. He did not claim to know what will cause it, noting that the bubbles in markets are often obvious while the event that punctures them tends to arrive from an unexpected direction.

Maharrey pointed to 2018 and 2019, when market weakness, a late-2018 stock selloff, and repo-market strain preceded the COVID-era monetary response. Lundin noted that the Fed began a roughly $500 billion liquidity effort in late August and early September 2019, even as officials resisted calling it quantitative easing.

Both Maharrey and Lundin argued that the https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/08/20/us-treasury-intervenes-in-bond-market-to-drive-yields-lower-005150";>Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is again expanding through bond purchases, regardless of the terminology officials use. Lundin said efforts to manage Treasury yields may provide temporary relief, but they do not eliminate the underlying debt problem.

New Orleans Investment Conference

Lundin also encouraged viewers to attend the New Orleans Investment Conference, which he said brings together roughly 40 speakers, mining companies, investors, and analysts during a metals and mining bull market.

The conference will take place over Halloween weekend in New Orleans and will include recorded presentations, panels, workshops, and a Metals and Mining Masquerade Ball. Lundin said the exhibit hall is sold out, hotel availability is tightening, and registrations are arriving at the fastest pace he has seen in decades.

For more information, Lundin directed viewers to GoldNewsletter.com and NewOrleansConference.com.

Gold Slammed as Strong Jobs Report Revives Rate Hike Fears

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up in a moment, we have an exclusive interview with Brien Lundin, editor of the Gold Newsletter and the CEO of the renowned New Orleans Investment Conference. Brien offers his tremendous insights into the current state of the gold market and warns investors who don’t own any of the yellow metal yet that they are simply playing with fire.

Mike Maharrey and Brien also discuss how rising interest rates are not necessarily a bad thing for metals and how the debasement trade is coming back into fashion, which could be a driver for higher gold prices moving forward.

So be sure to stick around for another terrific conversation with metals and financial industry insider Brien Lundin, coming up after this week’s market update. And as a reminder please download, like, rate and subscribe to this podcast wherever you consume this content.

Well, after precious metals appeared ready to finish the week on a strong note, a surprisingly strong U.S. employment report changed the picture on Friday morning.

And once again, it all comes down to expectations about what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates.

Gold and silver were getting slammed earlier this morning, with gold falling more than 2% following the release of the August jobs report – although it has since recovered somewhat.

The Labor Department reported this morning that the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August. That was nearly triple the roughly 56,000 jobs economists had expected. The unemployment rate also held steady at 4.1%.

On top of that, the government revised the previous two months higher by a combined 55,000 jobs.

Traders immediately began betting that the Fed is more likely to raise interest rates again.

Before the report, markets were putting the odds of a September rate hike at roughly 50-50. After the strong jobs numbers came out, the probability of a quarter-point hike jumped to around 60%.

Bond yields and the U.S. dollar moved higher.

And that was all traders in the highly leveraged futures markets needed to hear.

Initially, gold plunged more than 2% this morning, falling to around $4,375 an ounce in early trading. That's a remarkable reversal from Thursday, when the yellow metal surged roughly 2% and appeared to be regaining its footing.

Thursday's rally came after Fed Governor Christopher Waller suggested he could support leaving rates unchanged this month if inflation continues to cool.

Silver followed basically the same pattern. It enjoyed a strong recovery Thursday before getting caught in Friday morning's precious metals selloff.

The dramatic reversal shows just how sensitive gold and silver remain to changing expectations about interest rates.

But investors shouldn't mistake a bad day in the metals markets for a change in the long-term reasons for owning gold and silver.

The Fed is still dealing with stubborn inflation, enormous federal deficits, high borrowing costs, and now an economy that appears stronger than many economists expected.

In fact, today's employment report may make the Fed's job even harder.

Fed officials have been looking for signs that higher interest rates are slowing the economy enough to bring inflation under control. Instead, they just received evidence that employers are still hiring at a healthy pace.

That makes another rate hike more likely, which is clearly weighing on gold and silver today.

But higher interest rates create another problem. They also increase the cost of servicing the enormous federal debt. And the longer rates remain high, the more financial pressure that creates.

Meanwhile, central banks around the world are sending a very different message about gold.

They're not just watching what its price does from one day to the next. They increasingly view physical gold as a form of financial insurance.

And they're paying closer attention to where that gold is actually stored.

The latest example comes from the Netherlands.

The Dutch central bank has moved approximately 86 metric tons of gold out of North America and into London, citing growing geopolitical risks and the need to be better prepared for a potential crisis.

That's a substantial move.

Before the change, more than half of the Netherlands' gold reserves were stored in North America. About 31% was in New York and nearly 20% was in Ottawa.

Now, each location holds about 18.5% of Dutch reserves, while London's share has jumped from 18% to 32%.

And the reasoning isn't difficult to understand.

The Dutch central bank says spreading its gold among different locations reduces risk and makes the metal easier to access and use during a crisis.

Think about it this way.

You may legally own gold sitting in a vault thousands of miles away. But if there's a major financial or geopolitical crisis, suddenly the location of that gold matters.

Can you get to it? Can you move it? What government has jurisdiction over it? And what happens if transportation or financial markets are disrupted?

The Netherlands isn't the only country asking those questions.

France recently eliminated its remaining central-bank gold holdings in New York. Germany previously moved hundreds of tons of gold back home from Paris and New York, although it still keeps a significant amount at the New York Fed.

And a World Gold Council survey this year found more central banks changing where they keep their gold. Some are bringing more of it home, while others are spreading their overseas holdings among different locations.

In other words, central banks aren't just thinking about how much gold they own. They're thinking about where they own it.

And there's an interesting lesson here for the United States.

A tremendous amount of America's gold and silver trading infrastructure and physical inventory is concentrated in and around New York.

That may be convenient during normal times. But putting too much of something important in one place also creates risk.

A natural disaster, terrorist attack, major power outage, transportation shutdown, or other crisis could disrupt access to a large portion of the country's precious metals market at once.

That's why geographic diversification matters.

Central bankers understand something precious metals investors have understood for generations: Gold is supposed to protect you when the normal financial system isn't working normally.

And if that's why you own it, then where your gold is located – and whether you can actually get to it when you need it – matters.

So, Friday's strong jobs report may help determine what gold and silver do today, next week, or even next month.

But the much bigger story is what central banks are doing with physical gold for the long haul. They're continuing to treat it as strategic financial insurance – and increasingly, they're making sure they don't keep too much of that insurance in any one place.

Looking more closely now at the weekly market action before we get to this week’s interview, gold is down a slight 0.4% to check in at $4,450 an ounce as of this Friday late morning recording.

As for silver, the white metal showed a decent gain through Thursday but with today’s pullback is currently trading at $66.85, down about 20 cents or 0.3% on the week.

As for the PGMs, platinum is unchanged at $1,836, while palladium is showing a weekly decline of 2.7% to trade at $1,418 an ounce.

Well now, without further delay let’s get right to our exclusive interview with the man behind the famous New Orleans Investment Conference, Brien Lundin.

Mike Maharrey: Greetings. I'm Mike Mehring. I'm joined today by Brien Lundin. Brien is the editor of the Gold Newsletter and CEO of the New Orleans Investment Conference, which I'm going to give him an opportunity to tell you about at the end of the interview here. But excited to have Brien on. He's a great analyst and an all -around good human being. How you doing, Brien?

Brien Lundin: I'm doing great, Mike. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. It appears to me that you don't know me that well, but that's okay.

Mike Maharrey: Well, impressions, stuff like that.

Brien Lundin: Yeah.

Mike Maharrey: No, I always do enjoy talking to you and you seem like a good guy to me, so we're just going to go with it. Let's go

Brien Lundin: With it. Let's go with that.

Mike Maharrey: All right. So the markets are interesting right now. I guess they're always interesting, but we had several months of doldrums with gold and silver booth kind of trading sideways, and then we had a little bit of a breakout. And then the Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, kind of slammed the prices down with his Jackson Hole speech or his open mouth operations, as I like to call him. And you said in a recent article that was published over at moneymetals.com that the misplaced view that the Fed was going to be raising rates was getting exploded much earlier than you'd expected. And that was kind of the impetus at least initially of the resumption of the gold bull market, shall we say. So I'm curious, just first off, what do you mean by misplaced? Why do you think that the notion that Warsh is going to race and hike and be all aggressive, why is that misplaced? Because he keeps telling me that he's tough on inflation.

Brien Lundin: Yeah. He keeps telling people that, and he might be sincere in that belief. And frankly, I think Warsh is the best of a not so admirable group of Federal Reserve chairman that I've seen. He talks a good game. He might be sincere, but if he's sincere in what he's saying, then he just hasn't done the math. And Bessent the same way. Bessent was a gold bug before he took office and now he's in the uncomfortable position, I believe for him as supposedly based as he is in defending the administration and really saying some ridiculous things. So, on the one hand, we have Warsh who is moving the markets by making these pronunciations that fighting inflation is now job won for the Fed, and the market believes it and then they revert back to what they were doing before after a little while, kind of wear us off.

Brien Lundin: So, Warsh has done this, what, two, maybe three times so far, two meetings in one Jackson Hole speech. And we've had the reaction in the markets each time. And then the previous trend resumes really for everything. Bessent said when the federal debt rolled over 40 trillion, that 40 trillion isn't a magic number and we can grow our way out of it. And I commented in this month's issue of gold newsletter that just went out and on X, that he said that for straight face, but he obviously can't believe that he's done the math. There is no way at this point where the debt, as large as it is, with the trajectory as steep as it is for us to grow our way out of it. In the newsletter, I said that if aliens landed tomorrow and gave us the secret to unlimited energy and interstellar travel, okay, maybe we could grow our way out of it.

But absent that, the numbers just don't, the math doesn't work that way. We can't grow our way out of it. And the only thing that's going to happen is the age old prescription, the remedy that's been the same in every human civilization and that's the underlying currency has to be debased and that's what's going to happen. And I think that debasement trade as Wall Street so helpfully labeled it a while back, a year or so ago, is getting back in fashion and wants to get back in fashion.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, the math doesn't math. It's a great way to put it. It's funny because I think back and I remember the 1990s pretty well. I wasn't particularly interested in what was going on, but I was at least old enough to be cognizant. And I remember the contract with America and the big Republican revolution, and it was all built around we have too much debt We have too much spending! And they were telling us then that we could grow our way out of this fiscal mess. And here we are today, trillions and trillions of dollars later. And the trajectory seems to kind of move the same.

Brien Lundin: Yeah, it's a multiple. That's a multiple, what, four times what it was back then?

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, it's insane. In fact, I was just looking the other day. I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but just the amount of debt that has been added in the Biden-Trump era is pretty staggering in and of itself. You pointed out, and what kind of precipitated the most recent rally in gold before Warsh started flapping his yap in Jackson Hole was this move for the Treasury Department to buy more bonds on the long end of the yield curve. And you made the point, and I think rightfully so, that from just a technical standpoint, from a practical standpoint, not that big a deal. We have a 30 plus trillion dollar bond market. The treasury's going to intervene with what? They're doubling from two billion to $4 billion. So from that perspective, not a big deal, but the markets took it as a big deal.

Why do you think that happened? What kind of happened there in your mind?

Brien Lundin: Yeah, the markets took it, I think rightfully so, the underlying message that Bessent didn't want to deliver was that it wasn't technically yield curve control, but it was control of yields. And there is a very technical definition of yield curve control, which online everybody will quickly remind you of. But the sense decision and obvious inclination to mess with yields at one end means that he won't have any hesitation with messing with yields along the whole curve if and when he wants to. And the market took it as rightfully so again, that he was trying to jiggle the markets, can control the markets. And we all know that never works. In fact, the next day after the initial reaction, yields popped right back up to where they were beforehand. So doubling from two trillion billion to four billion went from one drop in the bucket to two drops in the bucket.

But the intent of the cent to show the treasury's determination and strength really only ended up showing the treasury's weakness.

Mike Maharrey: It kind of smacked of desperation, didn't it? It was kind of like, ‘But we're going to pretend like it wasn't desperation. No big deal, nothing to see here.’ And yet the markets I think saw something there, right?

Brien Lundin: Yeah. I mean, gold popped $180 in reaction, so that tells you everything you need to know. And what was really interesting about that day is that all of the markets popped on the reaction, stocks, bonds, the metals, et cetera. But as the day wore on, as the trading session wore on, the rally in equities kind of petered out and they still closed in the green, but far below their highs. In contrast, gold and silver just kept powering ahead all day long. So, I think that says a lot. I think that gold and bonds really are the most sensitive of the investment markets. All the investment markets are predictive mechanisms. Golden bonds I think are more sensitive than anything else. And gold and bonds are telling us that something lies ahead. They're really sniffing it out. One of the things I note in this issue of gold newsletter that I find really intriguing is that since late June, Treasury yields and treasury bond yields, in particular the 10-year Treasury yield and gold have been positively correlated for virtually that whole time.

Brien Lundin: And the only time they have it is when Warsh has stepped out and said something and gold has dropped down for a day or two, but otherwise they have been positively correlated. Gold has been rising with treasury yields and that only happens when treasury yields are rising for the atypical reasons when they're rising because bond vigilantes are coming out and saying, "We see trouble ahead. We demand higher returns, higher yields if you want us to invest in your securities." And they're also obviously for that reason hedging with gold.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah. I've been saying for quite some time that the notion that the Fed can just willy-nilly raise rates, and that's almost how Warsh makes it sound, right? Oh, well we're going to raise rates if we have to.

And yet we have this massive national debt, $40 trillion plus. We have massive levels of consumer debt, well over a trillion dollars just in credit card debt alone. We have massive levels of corporate debt. We're starting to see some kind of rumblings and ricketiness in the private bond market, private financing. So there's all this debt. It just seems obvious to me that talking about raising rates in this environment is at least questionable. And yet nobody in the mainstream ever seems to question it. And I'm curious, this is more of a rhetorical question than anything, but I'm curious about your response. Why? Why isn't anybody paying attention to the debt in relation to what the Fed may or may not do?

Brien Lundin: Well, because the problem never seems to blow up. And frankly, I can understand it. I've been in this business for over four decades and I have seen some of the smartest people I know and some of the analysts that I respect most walk across our stage at the New Orleans conference and predict that the debt bond is finally going to blow up. And they've been doing that for 30 some odd years and it never happens. And part of me says, well, am I just getting to the point where I'm becoming a curmudgeon as well and looking at it and say, Oh, it's going to blow up now. Everything's going to hell. You youngsters get off my lawn and all this stuff. But then I look at the math and the numbers now are absolutely staggering. And of course, if you're the issuer of the world's global reserve currency, you have more leeway than other nations and you can get away with it for longer.

But when you're paying more on the interest on the national debt than you are in national defense and you are the guardian of the world, you're the policeman of the world, so you're already spending more than anybody else in that regard, you're spending more in interest. And those interest costs are about to exceed every other line item in the budget. It is just inescapable to me, irrefutable that this is a problem. Now when the debt rolled over 40 trillion, I did see some commentators on CNBC talk about that and talk about how the cost of servicing the debt was so large, et cetera, et cetera. But then they quickly moved on because it wasn't about AI. It wasn't what everybody wanted to see and wanted to see them commenting on. And so they simply moved on. And until it blows up, people will not pay attention.

And I think we are, I mean, really after 45 years of ever easier money, ever greater debts that ever easier money encourages, I think we're in the end game. But how long will that end game go? We don't know. There are people out there saying, "This is it. The next crisis will be the big one." The Peter Schiffs of the world saying, "It's done. We're toast the next crisis and there'll be a big reset and everything else." I don't know that. I don't think anybody can be smart enough to know that, but I think what we can do is recognize the trend and we are stuck firmly in that trend right now and you want to play that trend. You want to protect yourself, monetary metals, and I think mining stocks and other levers on those metals.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because you get that sense of complacency. We've been, like I just mentioned, back in the '90s, we were talking about the problem of the debt and nothing has happened. I always think of that quote that things happen slowly and then all at once. That always kind of rings in the back of my head, but I kind of get what you're saying. You do sometimes feel like a permabear. And then when something does happen, people are, "Oh yeah, there's Meharry again, broken clock right every once in a while. If you bearish long enough, you're going to hit every once in a while." But I think you're right. You look at the trajectory of things. And I think two things are most concerning to me. The first is the fact that nobody seems concerned about actually doing anything about the debt. It'd be one thing if we said, "Okay, 40 trillion, that's a lot. It's a problem. Let's address this." Nobody in politics is willing to address, and the nature of politics I think is such that it won't get addressed because everybody's short term. I care about getting elected, so I don't want to cause any pain now. If there's pain in 20 years, so be it. And then the other thing that's concerning, you mentioned the fact that the dollar is the world reserve standard, the world reserve currency. That is obviously fading. There's no question about that. We're seeing gold overtake dollars as the primary reserve currency for central banks. We're seeing these shifts. And I think that the slower movement maybe is more relevant to us today than trying to predict some type of major crash. Do you agree with that?

Brien Lundin: Yeah. People do move on. It's human nature. And I just get back to one of the truisms of my life is that complacency kills and eventually the unthinkable or the sometimes in the future becomes thinkable. And today, a little over 20 years ago, I used to jog just about every morning down to the Lake Pontchartrain where I lived. I lived down here around New Orleans, and I would jog along the levee there by Lake Potcha train. And one year, early in the summer, they went and dumped a bunch of dirt on top of it. Just didn't try and build up the levee, just added foot and a half of dirt on the top of it. So the next police cruiser after they did that, that road along the levee just smashed all that dirt and it went tumbling down the levee. And I thought to myself, I really should write a letter to the paper saying if they don't really address these levees properly, it's going to be absolutely catastrophic.

A few months later, Katrina hits and floods the city and I think, damn, I would've looked really smart at the time, but it was exactly that. It was complacency. Nothing had hit for 40 years, almost 40 years. We never had a big hurricane that really threatened the city. So people got complacent. And coincidentally, that's about the same kind of timeframe that we're looking at since the late '70s and the early '80s and that crisis.

When you needed a Paul Volcker to come in and really just throw a deluge of water on the fire of inflation, now they can't do that because back then, of course, Volcker was in a situation where the debt was 35% of GDP. Now it's closer to 135% of GDP, and you just don't have the toolbox. You can't raise rates anywhere near those levels, even to normalized levels because of the cost of servicing the debt once you do that, and the tremendous leverage of rate increases to the debt. So yeah, I think Warsh could and might do one quarter point hike to show face with Trump's approval, but a campaign of rate hikes, it's just impossible now.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I agree completely. And you talk about complacency. I remember back 2006, 2007, that's exactly what we saw. Everything's fine. Subprime is contained. No problem, nothing to see here. Even in 2008, people were saying that kind of stuff, and of course we all know how that panned out. I've got an investment question that gets thrown at me a lot, and I'm curious of how you would respond to people who say this, because I think this is kind of the conventional thinking. Interest rates are clearly going up. The bond market is struggling. We have yields going up on the long end of the curve. Higher yields are negative for gold because gold is a non-yielding asset. So therefore, anytime we think that inflation may increase, the Fed may increase interest rates. We're going to sell our gold and silver because interest rates are going to be higher and we want to have bonds.

What is wrong with this conventional thinking in this day and age in your opinion, if anything?

Maybe that's the right move. I don't think so.

Brien Lundin: Yeah. Well, it's wrong in any day and age. I mean, you look at some of the periods when gold rose much the strongest, some of the strongest bull market runs of gold since really the gold market began in 1971 as an investible asset in ‘74 in the US. You look at some of the strongest runs that gold went on, and they were typically during a period of rising interest rates, rising yields. In the '70s, it was because yields were rising to combat inflation, but yields couldn't keep up with inflation, and therefore gold rose with inflation until the rate increases finally killed it off. Today, you see yields and gold rising for the same reasons, because debt and deficits are starting to matter. They've gotten so large, so ominous that in the crisis is now seemingly so much nearer that bond vigilantes are gold bucks today and they're buying for the same reasons.

So, that is higher yields typically events either economic strength and/or tighter monetary policy to whatever extent the Fed can actually control or influence the longer end of the curve. Today, they can't raise rates for those reasons, but rates are rising in a free market environment because of the problem with the debt and deficits. So yeah, it is not rising or yields aren't rising for the same reason as we've seen often in the past. And what's interesting is that it's not just the US. You look at sovereign bond yields across the world and without exception, they're all going from lower left to upper right in a very steep fashion. So it is not just… and I've never been one to say it's the dollar, the dollar, the dollar. It is all fiat currencies. We're all in the same boat. All the currencies are racing to the bottom of the hill at varying rates.

Some surge into the lead, some fall back, some are gaining the lead. That's why the dollar index to me, for my purposes, is meaningless. It's the dollar gold index to me, the price of gold that really tells the story.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah. All the dollar index tells you is which fiat currency is the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry. I'll take some nice shiny clean gold over any of those dollar paper currency, not dollar paper currencies, but fiat paper currencies anytime of the day. I saw an analyst the other day that in effect, he called for or forecast a forever market in gold. Now he didn't say that. What he said was that he thought we'd be in a bull market in gold until governments get their debt situation and their spending under control. And I read that and said, "Oh, that's forever because that's not going to happen." Do you think that's a reasonable way to put it or is that crazy talk?

Brien Lundin: No, I don't think it's crazy talk. I think there'll be an underlying macro trend that will be supportive of gold, but the technical definition of a gold bull market, I don't think we'll be so fortunate to enjoy the kind of market we had for the first 18 months of this market where central banks were buying hand over fists of Western investors and the algos weren't really involved. So our only corrections were resolved in terms of time and not price. We just traded sideways and then bammo! it took off again. That was a real luxury at the time. So, I don't think we're going to enjoy that. I think now that Western investors are playing in our sandbox again and the Algos are taking control, they're going to read Federal Reserve statements, they're going to look at what Warsh says. And if he mentions he took a hike in the woods, they're going to sell everything.

Mike Maharrey: He's on a hike!

Brien Lundin: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, we're going to have the wiggles on the line. We will have technical corrections, but I completely agree with the sentiment that until there's a resolution of the Fiat currency problem or human nature after a million years or so suddenly changes, then yeah, we're going to have a wind beneath our wings for gold and silver and the associated assets.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I agree with you. And of course, in any bull market, it never goes up in a straight line anyway. There's always corrections and ups and downs. And I agree also that we could see significantly more volatility as we go down the road because of exactly what you say. We're so headline driven, right? Every time somebody blows a kiss in the desert in Iran or something, the markets move on that. But looking at that long-term trend, and I say this all the time, one thing we can count on, we can't count on a lot in the world, especially when it comes to economics and finance, but one thing we can count on is that next year the dollar will be worth less than it was at the beginning of the year. That's just the reality. That's the plan, right? 2% inflation, that means devalue the currency by at least 2% every single year.

So, I think people forget that sometimes.

Brien Lundin: Yeah, you're exactly right. And 2% is still significant, and we know that it's more than that underlying. And that's why people ask me, should I buy gold? After this big run, can I afford to buy gold right now? And I ask them if I don't know what their personal situation is, I say, "Well, do you own precious metals? Do you have a significant portion of your wealth in physical metals?" And if they say no, then I say, "Well, the question at that point is, can you afford not to?" Because if you have dollars sitting in a bank, you have to expect that those dollars are going to be in three years’ worth 10, 20, maybe 30% less than they are today. Whereas gold over broad swaths of history has always protected against that kind of depreciation. Now you can cherry-pick your endpoints along the line to try and disprove that, but over long periods of history, gold and silver have always protected against that.

But there are other things. If you invested in the mining stocks, you have to recognize you're in a bull trend. But when you're in a bull market, there are a few lessons you need to remember. And the first is buy the dips. If you're in a bull market, buy the dips. And concurrently, when the market gets really frothy like it did in January, you need to skim some of that froth off of the market and remember to do that. I mean, in gold newsletter, we have so many multi-baggers in our portfolio. And this issue, we had a 20 bagger that I'm telling people, listen, I have to tell you, I think in a year or two it's going to be trading much higher, but you got to take some froth off the market. You really do.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, it makes sense. It really requires kind of a calm your mind, look objectively, look at the long term, look at the underlying dynamics. And it's hard in this world where we are so headline driven. And again, just the slightest movement of some headline on X can move markets and you have to have the discipline to resist those knee-jerk reactions and instead focus on that plan and on those fundamental things. Yeah,

Brien Lundin: Absolutely.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Is there anything, we talked about the interest rate in the feds, that's obvious things, and of course the war headlines. Are there anything else right now that has particularly got your attention relating to the gold market that you're kind of watching that maybe folks that are paying more attention to Fox Business or CNBC maybe are missing?

Brien Lundin: Yeah. What I've been telling people is that that market in January and then even it recovered and then later in February, that market was so frothy that it was going to trip over itself at some point. We were going to have a correction driven by speculation by the Algos and other Western traders. But that said, that fairly long correction, the longest and the first world serious one that we've had in this bull market, gold was kept in check for two reasons. One being the supposedly hawkish stance of the Fed under Warsh, and two, the war with Iran. And both of those in my mind are temporary. They're going to go away. So that's why I was very bullish over the longer term, even in the midst of that correction. The other thing that over the last month or so that I'm thinking is something I really don't know what it is, but that gold and again bonds seem to be sniffing out something ahead.

Something that's going to precipitate the next big crisis that's going to bring the central banks led by the Fed in another massive rescue effort with huge, huge doses of liquidity and easing. And I don't know what that is. Typically, these things come out of left field. The bubbles are easy to see, in this case, the US stock market assuredly, but the pins that pop those bubbles tend to come out of left field and something we really weren't considering and not very many people were considering. But again, timing, the fact that it seems like something's coming up, that gold and bonds are seeing that the situation is getting pretty extreme. I think that's a signal we really need to listen to.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah. I think you make a really good point. I always think back to 2018, 2019, which is a little slice of financial history that I don't think a lot of people really remember or made much of a big deal out of it because it was overwhelmed by COVID just a few months later. But if you'll recall, and folks listening might recall, in October of 2018, there was a big stock market crash. The Fed that December announced that they were done with their tightening and they actually went back to quantitative easing and cut rates I think three times in 2019 before COVID. So it was kind of the same thing. It was like the markets are sniffing something out here. Now, I don't think it was. Obviously they didn't know a pandemic was coming ostensibly, but the markets did know that there was shakiness, and I think that was the result of all the monetary malfeasance from 2008 that was kind of coming to a head. And in a way, I think COVID was a little bit of a reprieve for the central bankers because they were able to double down, triple down on quantitative easing, on liquidity and kind of rescue the economy proactively from the 2008 malfeasance.

Brien Lundin: Yeah, and blame it on some…

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, go ahead.

Brien Lundin: And shift the blame on something out of their control when the situation was in fact largely resulting from the bubbles that they themselves blew up through their rescue efforts. Yeah, in the very last day or so of August and going into September of 2019, the Fed began another episode of quantitative easing and they vehement They denied it was quantitative easing because they weren't buying all across the curve. So, they left one or two points of the curve untouched. But it was, they did about $500 billion worth of QE in September of that year. And they weren't predicting COVID, but I think you make a good point. They saw shakiness in the market in that situation, the repo market. They needed to add some liquidity to the markets because things had gotten a bit extreme. And in their eyes, as you imply, thank God for COVID because we can blame somebody else on that.

Mike Maharrey: And here's a dirty little secret that I've been harping on for a while now. The Fed is running quantitative easing now. Shhhh. Don't tell anybody. Of course they won't call it that, but go look at the balance sheet folks, you will see that the balance sheet is increasing. They are buying bonds and they're buying them with money created out of thin air. You can call it whatever you want. I think they like to term it is we're just keeping the plumbing of the financial system clean. So Drano, but don't drink the Drano because it'll kill you.

Brien Lundin: Stanley Druckenmiller made the point very well in that now infamous Wall Street Journal op-ed when he criticized Bessant for his actions and they are trying to control the market. They're not providing liquidity. There was ample liquidity. And in fact, that was costing the treasury more because they were buying back bonds at lower interest rates than they were immediately reissuing to the market at higher rates. So, it really did not make any sense whatsoever and was again sending a signal of desperation to the markets and a signal that they were inclined and willing to fiddle around along the curve on yields.

Mike Maharrey: So we've got all of this craziness going on. I would say this would be a really good time to educate yourself and a great place to do that would be the New Orleans Investment Conference, which is coming up in less than two months. Tell us about that, Brien.

Brien Lundin: Well, coincidentally, Mike, I agree with you completely on that.

Mike Maharrey: That was a pretty smooth transition too, you have to admit.

Brien Lundin: That was a big fat ball right over the plate and I appreciate that. I hope I can now hit it out of the park, but I won't go through our speaker list because I'm going to forget somebody and I don't have it in front of me, but our business model is provide value that far exceeds anything else you're going to get in the market. If you look at our speaker list, I tell people you might see three or four of our speakers at some other conference, but you're not going to find 40. And that's exactly what you get here at this event. So we provide tremendous value by far the best you'll find anywhere out in any other conference. It's really a lot of fun to come to New Orleans for this event. It's an intellectual ambiance that is unmatched, that has to be experienced to be understood.

And I really urge people to go to our website and check out our speaker list because it's the speakers, it's the attendees that share their ideas that are really, really smart people. If they weren't really smart, they wouldn't be coming to this event. And it's the timing. If in this kind of a market, in this kind of a metals and mining bull market that I believe is going to eventually be the best we've ever experienced, the most rewarding for those positioned in it, you really can't afford not to be in New Orleans. I mean, we have five decades of history that show that if you go to New Orleans in a market like this, well, you're going to be really, really happy over the next year because all of the biggest winners in junior mining, not all, but the vast majority of the biggest winners are going to be in our exhibit hall at this conference.

Brien Lundin: And that's a tremendous opportunity as well. Our exhibit hall sold out, our hotel will be sold out. It's a matter of time and it's going to be much sooner this year than ever before. And registrations are flowing in at a faster pace than we've seen in decades. So I would advise people to not only check it out, but also act very quickly to reserve your place because it's coming up soon. It's hurtling toward me as I speak. And it will be in a situation this year where if you don't get in soon, you may not be able to attend at all or at least not attend conveniently. So please check out our website and register. And you also save hundreds of dollars right now from the cost of as we get closer to the event.

Mike Maharrey: What's that website?

Brien Lundin: NewOrleansconference.com. Very easy.

Mike Maharrey: And it's Halloween weekend this year, which New Orleans Halloween weekend, that's kind of fun in and of itself.

Brien Lundin: Yeah, it is a bucket list experience. And I do want to comfort people that if everything is recorded, every presentation, every panel, every workshop is video recorded, you'll have full access to everything. And we're adjusting our schedule this year. We usually end with a big flourish with some really bigger name speakers, but we're moving them earlier in the schedule this year. And so if you have to leave early to go trick or treating with your kids or grandkids, you won't miss as much and you can get it all on video. And we're also going to close with a metals and mining masquerade ball. So we encourage costuming. And New Orleans on Halloween is, again, something that you really want to experience at least once in your life.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that'd be a blast. Before I go, let folks know where they can find the newsletter and follow you and avail themselves to the information that you provide on a regular basis.

Brien Lundin: Goldnewsletter.com and neworleansconference.com. And you can follow me on X at Brien, B-R-I-E-N_Lundin, L-U-N-D-I-N.

Mike Maharrey: That is outstanding and I appreciate you. I know that the conference is hurtling as you said, so I appreciate you taking a little time out of your day. I'm glad we got to have you on before the conference so folks can be reminded if they haven't already signed up. Well, we really encourage you to consider going. It's a great experience and you'll have the opportunity to rub shoulders with, as you said, a lot of really smart people and hopefully you'll go home smarter too. So thanks for being on the show today and hanging out with me, and we'll definitely have you back on again, and we appreciate all that you do.

Brien Lundin: Always a pleasure, Mike. Anytime.

Wonderful insights from Brien Lundin and we thoroughly enjoyed having him back on, and we hope folks will plan to attend the New Orleans Investment Conference, coming up at the end of next month. For information there again just go to https://neworleansconference.com/"; target="_blank" rel="noopener noopner">NewOrleansConference.com.

Well, that will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. And don’t miss our second weekly podcast, the Money Metals Midweek Memo available each Wednesday. To check out any of our audio programs just visit https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts";>MoneyMetals.com/podcasts or find them on places like Spotify, Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And as a big help to us we would ask you to please like, subscribe, download and rate our podcasts. Doing so helps us extend the reach of this material.

Until next time, this has been Mike Gleason with https://www.moneymetals.com/";>Money Metals Exchange, thanks for listening and have a wonderful weekend everybody.

If Rats Can Eat Your Money, It's Probably Not Good Money

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 EST

This is the perfect story that contrasts the value of real money – gold and silver – with the paper stuff your government tries to pass off as money.

A Dutch homeowner digging in his backyard found more than 40 pounds of 1,000-year-old silver. Meanwhile, piles of cash stashed in fields and stuffed into walls a couple of decades ago got moldy and chewed up by rats.

Viking Silver

The silver horde discovered in Denmark consisted of around 700 objects from the Viking era, including bars, coins, and jewelry. The items are in remarkably good condition, considering they’ve been buried for around 1,000 years.

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Photo courtesy of North Jutland Museums

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/vikings/biggest-surprise-of-my-life-homeowner-discovers-denmarks-largest-viking-age-silver-hoard-in-their-backyard"; target="_blank" rel="noopener">According to Live Science, all the silver bars, along with some of the bracelets and silver fragments, can be sorted into specific weight groups. This indicates that the collection represented an “important storage of wealth,” not just a random assortment of silver objects.

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"The treasure so clearly shows how silver functioned as wealth and a means of payment in the Viking Age. It's like finding a safe from the Viking Age," North Jutland Museums cultural heritage manager Torben Sarauw said.

It’s notable that 1,000 years later, that wealth still exists and is worth every bit as much as it was back in its day.

In fact, based on the purity of comparable Viking-era Danish silver (around 94 percent), the 18.5-kilogram hoard contains roughly 559 troy ounces of pure silver. At the https://www.moneymetals.com/silver-price";>current spot price, the melt value is over $37,000.

So, here’s a question for you to ponder over a cup of coffee. What would happen to $37,000 in U.S. paper currency buried in the ground for 1,000 years? Would it still be worth $37,000?

We kind of know the answer to that question because people have tried it.

Turns out paper buried in the ground or stuffed in walls doesn’t hold up very well.

Billion-Dollar Rat Food

In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Pablo Escobar was one of the richest men in the world. Forbes featured him on its list of international billionaires for seven straight years from 1987 to 1993.

Escobar made his billions the old-fashioned way.

Selling drugs.

In his day, Escobar’s Medellín cartel supplied around 80 percent of the world’s cocaine.

Roberto Escobar served as Pablo’s accountant. In his autobiography, he said the cartel brought in so much cash that it couldn’t launder the money fast enough. Cartel members resorted to stashing currency inside dilapidated warehouses, farm fields, and inside the walls of their homes.

Roberto said the cartel simply wrote off $2.1 billion per year in lost or destroyed cash.

"Pablo was earning so much that each year we would write off 10 percent of the money because the rats would eat it in storage or it would be damaged by water or lost."

I’m just going to note here that rats don’t eat silver or gold.

Pablo’s nephew Nicholas Escobar confirmed the story, saying he found $18 million in cash stuffed inside the walls of an apartment once used by the cartel. Of course, many of the banknotes were damaged and unusable.

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“The smell was astonishing. A smell 100 times worse than something that had died,” Nicholas said.

I’ll also note that silver and gold don’t stink when they’re left inside a wall.

Rats weren’t the only rodents eating away Pablo’s fortune. Politicians in Washington, D.C., were stealing his wealth through relentless currency debasement.

For the sake of argument, let’s say Pablo sealed $37,000 in cash in a wall back in 1990. If somebody stumbled upon that little horde today, it would only buy about $14,117 worth of stuff.

In other words, the purchasing power of that money plunged by nearly 62 percent in less than 40 years.

That is assuming the animal rats didn’t get to it first.

One of Aristotle’s four characteristics of good money is durability. In other words, money must stand the test of time. It can’t break down, rot, or corrode easily.

And it probably shouldn’t be edible by rats.

Paper fiat dollars fail this test miserably.

Viking silver, on the other hand…