Gold Price On Track To Reach $87,796 By 2051?!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Today's show, we're going to think about what's happened to the gold price over the past 25 years, where that would leave us if we got a repeat of that over the next 25 years, and also consider could that happen?

[00:00:17]>> [singing] >> Well, hello there my friends. Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia Economics on a beautiful Tuesday, April 21st.

[00:00:26]Hope you're doing well out there and today's show, we're going to take a moment to think about what's happened to the gold price over the past 25 years, where that would leave us if we got a repeat of that over the next 25 years, and also consider is that actually realistic or could that happen? So, focus on gold a bit today, not too much war talk.

[00:00:55]Uh quick update there is that last headline I saw, Trump was threatening to destroy Iran and simultaneously saying that a great deal is close.

[00:01:06]So, we'll see how that goes.

[00:01:09]Quite a bit of theatrics with the headlines and that entity that continues to seemingly front run the headlines with the CFTC on the case and going to track that down at some point theoretically, but anyway, we'll leave that aside.

[00:01:25]Maybe not entirely cuz it factors into our discussion today, but and either case, we'll dig into first, what happened over the last 25 years.

[00:01:36]By the way, in case you noticed, I'm doing something a little different today. We're out for a walk.

[00:01:42]I'm in beautiful Tennessee.

[00:01:45]A lot of green hills. I am joined. There you go. Hi Nibbles. Say hello to your fans.

[00:01:51]So, I figured that I didn't sit behind the computer and show you Bloomberg and all that stuff today. We'd get a little beautiful nature. It's quite lovely here and hear birds chirping and they're wondering what's going to happen with the gold price, too. So, just put that in our view count in addition to humans watching on YouTube.

[00:02:11]Have a lot of wildlife probably sitting there observing the planet, the things humans do, and either case, back to the gold market, if you take a look at the long-term chart, you can see in March of 2021, so, we just passed the 25-year anniversary of that.

[00:02:33]Gold price after it had been in a bear market from 1980 until 2001 got down to 257 bucks.

[00:02:41]And we're I think we're around 4840 the gold futures this morning when I left.

[00:02:49]So, if you do the math on that from $257 to $4800 and change, dollars, it was over an 18 bagger if I remember correctly.

[00:03:02]Although, fortunately, before I left here, Nibbles had me write down that.

[00:03:07]Basically, if you apply that same rate of return that we saw with the gold price from 2021 to 2026, and you apply that same pace from 2026 to 2051, all right, who wants to take a guess?

[00:03:25]Take a Think about this.

[00:03:27]What do you think that would leave the gold price 25 years from now? And I'm going to tell you the answer in a second, although might be fun to think just if you went from 257 to 4800 and change, now we're at 4800 and change.

[00:03:44]Before we get into whether it's realistic or likely of if that could happen, just if it did happen, just gut get just gut answer, where do you think that leaves us?

[00:03:57]Now that I've held the suspense for a moment there, I'll tell you, that would be 87,000 $976.

[00:04:07]And when you think about a gold price of almost $88,000 on one hand, sounds quite large, certainly it is.

[00:04:17]On the other hand, that's just the math of repeating what has just happened.

[00:04:22]Now, will we see an $88,000 in our lifetime?

[00:04:28]I don't know.

[00:04:29]Um certainly wouldn't guarantee that yet.

[00:04:35]If you look 20 years ahead or 50 years ahead, longer than that, at least, you know, it sounds silly on one sense, but when you think about what has driven the gold price from 257 bucks to 4800, and then you look at what's happening in the world, I don't know over the next 25 years, certainly I wouldn't rule it out.

[00:05:00]Nothing else than that with the way the global debt loads are going up.

[00:05:07]I mean, they're not slowing down.

[00:05:10]I mean, we were already in a fragile situation before this war broke out.

[00:05:13]Now, it's just like I mean, I think they asked Pete Hegseth at one point, is there any amount that the or maybe it was Besson.

[00:05:21]Saying, is there any amount that, you know, if the war cost this much, we'd say, all right, that might have to affect our decision-making. Of course, the answer was no.

[00:05:30]The Trump administration, I saw they had that request to increase military budget by 50% in the next year.

[00:05:38]And not taking I'm not poking at Trump today. So, any Trump fans, you don't have to get your feathers all ruffled.

[00:05:45]Trump, Clinton, Bushes, Obama, US, Canada, Australia, wherever. I mean, we see the pattern. I don't think that matters too much.

[00:06:00]I don't know, maybe it's somewhat just human nature and when you get into power and I think after we saw Elon Musk come in, do his doge thing, which he seemed pretty excited about, and then basically stormed off saying that they ignored everything he said.

[00:06:18]What What do I think is most likely that we get fiscal responsibility in the next 25 years or that continue pretty much the same rate of the way things have been going?

[00:06:31]A lot easier to see a continuation. You would certainly hope not.

[00:06:36]But anyway, when you think of what happened in the past 25 years, I think we had 5 trillion of debt by the year 2001.

[00:06:48]Remember when Bush came in, he doubled it. I think over his 8 years, it went from 5 to 10. This was just 25 years ago that we were at single-digit trillions.

[00:06:59]And I believe Obama doubled it from 10 to 20.

[00:07:04]I think it's 2015 or 2016, Trump said that he was going to begin paying down the national debt.

[00:07:10]That did not happen in his first term.

[00:07:12]Biden certainly didn't pay it down, either.

[00:07:15]And I know Trump had said with the tariffs that they were going to pay it down and give everybody checks, although now the tariffs have been overturned. He also did say if the tariffs were overturned, we're screwed.

[00:07:26]Actual quote on that one.

[00:07:30]But either case, the number has not gone down yet. Maybe one day Oh, actually, here's the thing.

[00:07:38]We're at the point where even if there were the will to bring it down and cut social security and Medicare and you're kind of past the point of no return. I mean, with government spending representing last I looked, it was a 23, 24% of GDP, you know, you stop all that spending, you also have the collapse of an economy that's been powered through quantitative easing and low interest rates and all sorts of other stuff like that.

[00:08:11]So, not only could you say that it's likely that government and war policy continues on similarly over the next 25 years, excuse me, [cough and clears throat] but I think you could also make a good case that it's it's We're going to We're going to turn around here, Nibbles.

[00:08:35]Get back in the camera. There you go, boy.

[00:08:37]So, I think you could also make the case that not continuing that pattern would result in a collapse of the system.

[00:08:48]And I don't know, at least for me, when in doubt, is the Fed or whoever ends up with power and makes such decisions going to say, all right, we'll let it crash and rebuild rather than paper it over with more treasuries or whatever, you know, I mean, who Guess you got a warning with Japan in the '90s, but for the most part, who knew that when you have the housing bubble collapse, that something called QE would just be the magic bomb? Let's put some of that stuff on there.

[00:09:23]We're good to go now.

[00:09:26]So, it's just always hard to see the government standing aside, the Federal Reserve, the other central banks standing aside when something like that happens.

[00:09:39]I guess anything's possible, but when you're looking farther out and thinking, well, you know, it's like it's it's wild that we've gotten to this point, but some of these extreme outcomes, and I'm not saying that we're going to have to hit an extreme outcome.

[00:09:55]Not ruling it out, either, and I'm not trying to clickbait or suggest wild stuff, but just when you actually think, well, like where where else can this go?

[00:10:06]Because again, it's kind of like you're seeing now where with the oil price soaring at times, people are worried about deflation, and you see the precious metals selling off.

[00:10:17]Well, that's fine, but the problem with that deflation thing is that is Trump and Jerome Powell or Kevin Jeez, I guess we got to be getting closer to war time.

[00:10:29]Now, he was uh I think in the Senate this morning, so we'll see how that goes, but Trump and whoever just not take sides, let's imagine whoever comes in after Trump, whoever comes in after that, can you actually see them standing aside, whoever their Fed chairman is standing aside, letting the banks collapse? We got a reminder in 2023 when a couple banks fell over.

[00:10:55]Um so, is anything possible?

[00:10:59]Sure, maybe there is a revamp of the system. I would think that actually becomes a growing possibility.

[00:11:07]You hear Trump and Besson make comments alluding to that.

[00:11:12]Trump's been talking about an overhaul of the system. We hear them talking about the crypto technology.

[00:11:19]I get the feeling that there's clearly more planned than they're announcing or broadcasting, similar to the war, similar to what happened after the US went in and kidnapped Maduro, and it was within days like, "Uh we might get Greenland and Columbia and I think they were even talking about Canada at one point, which seems quite wild, yet it's like especially when an entity is in danger, financial danger, then the range of outcomes that maybe formerly seemed ridiculous, you know, it's like if your life is on the line, you get desperate, you'll try anything, so I'm not saying that's why the Iran war started when it did, yet this was a fragile setup even before that happened.

[00:12:15]And now more is being piled on even after that's happened.

[00:12:20]I would imagine at some point damage gets rebuilt.

[00:12:24]Governments are already in debt, how does that get funded?

[00:12:27]Good chance for more printed money in a variety of currencies, aside from gold and silver, of course, which is coming back to our theme, why it's a lot easier to see a continuation over the next 25 years of what we've seen over the past 25 years than a divergence, unless that divergence is that rather than the gold price Or we'll we'll even leave the gold price aside that let's say measured in money supply metrics, you could it's easier to see even more money being printed and borrowed over the next 25 years than over the past 25 years.

[00:13:11]You could say it's going to be equal.

[00:13:14]Hard for me to see how it's going to be less.

[00:13:19]I mean, you would hope for that. You'd hope by 2051 we have something more of a stable financial system that is really equitable for all and I think by that point we'll certainly have alternatives. When you think about what are the BRICS going to be doing 25 years from now?

[00:13:40]Hard to imagine they'll be doing what they were doing 25 years ago where the dollar and the US Treasury were still dominating the financial system and the backbone of the oil market.

[00:13:53]Been sitting here tracking those developments for years.

[00:13:58]For example, the concept of the unit, which has now been floating out there a couple of years that included the 40% gold backing for a BRICS settlement currency.

[00:14:09]That hasn't gone away. I don't that was not made up. We've seen verification of that.

[00:14:14]And that's exactly the kind of thing that in the news cycle people say, "Oh, well, they didn't announce it at the BRICS meeting." and then forget about it, yet kind of like the euro, these things don't necessarily happen overnight, but when you have a 25-year timeline, you're already seeing the world in informal manner go to gold with the record central bank buying we've seen over the last couple of years.

[00:14:40]Nibbles is taking a little pit stop over there.

[00:14:43]That's a good dog, Nibbles.

[00:14:46]You water that tree. Where did you go, boy?

[00:14:49]There you go. There's the star of our video.

[00:14:53]So, we're already seeing a move towards gold.

[00:14:58]I don't think the and now in the middle of an Iran war where there's more sanctions being dished out, US talking about sanctioning China. It's wild. I saw headlines recently of I think it was Besson talking about how a Chinese ship was bringing supplies to Iran, and the US wanted to sanction that.

[00:15:19]Well, I guess in that, well, it seems like we're in an environment where at least as best from what I can tell, Russia and China are siding more with Iran than with the West.

[00:15:33]And all right, you have a blockade. I don't know, maybe you have more war to settle it, but still you see a shift away and a shift towards the gold-dominant China model.

[00:15:47]So, where does that leave the US in 25 years if we continue to back away from the eastern half of the globe?

[00:15:58]I think that's what's fascinating because aside from the war, if you go back a year ago, that a lot of the talk was the Trump administration effort to reshore manufacturing, which I think is a good thing and think needs to be done.

[00:16:14]Yet, when you look at the steps to accomplish that, you have some major impediments given the current gold pricing. I mean, it kind of puts you at the point where eventually I'm careful to say we're definitely going to get a gold price reset, yet the odds that we're going to get a gold price reset go up, and it becomes more difficult as some of these imbalances grow to see what other way that is eventually addressed.

[00:16:46]Because the positive news for gold fans is that I mean, let's say they Let's say they the US decided that overnight they wanted to pay off the national debt, the 38 trillion, whatever it is now.

[00:17:07]You could do a gold price reset and do that.

[00:17:11]You'd have a handful of inflation in there. I would suggest you have a handful of inflation in the system, and it's going to hit pricing regardless whatever happens.

[00:17:23]But still, at least that way Now, I'm not saying that would be the most honest or integral thing to do, yet just in terms of if I'm if I'm pressing the controls of the mothership here and thinking, well, what are the conceivable options that Fed or government or whoever, deep state, whoever decides such things, she's intriguing wondering when Jeff Epstein was alive. Like, was was he one of the ones like it sounds amazingly like he was in some cases with big financial decisions like this factoring in, yet aside uh well, hey, I mean, I guess if you're a gold holder, you do a gold reset, you're kind of happy about that.

[00:18:10]Um but I mean, B, for them, it could you can mechanically erase debt doing that.

[00:18:20]And I'm not saying they won't come up with some alternate scheme, yet that's sitting there, and that's it's always been the easiest way maybe I didn't understand the mechanics of that 17 years ago when I first started digging into gold, but certainly as time's gone by, time has as time has gone by, I've spent the last 20 almost years trying to figure out, well, what else do they actually do?

[00:18:50]I mean, you have the debt, and it's growing, and human nature suggesting it's going to continue to grow. Again, then that insurance upon that premise is that even if they tried to stop growing the debt and pay that down, that I think we're past the point of mathematical no return on that, so something has to be done. I can't say 100% that there's no other way to do it, although that is a way to do it.

[00:19:21]We also have a Treasury Secretary in Scott Bessent, who said that at his old hedge fund they used to call him gold bug.

[00:19:29]So, I mean, there's that.

[00:19:32]You also have Scott Bessent, who before he became Treasury Secretary and after has talked about a new Bretton Woods realignment and how he very much hopes to be a part of that.

[00:19:44]You also had Stephen Myron, who was the chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, write his 41-page thesis, the hand guide it was called on how to restructure the global trading system, which talked ad nauseam about a lower dollar.

[00:20:02]Then of course you have Trump out there making quite clear that he wants lower interest rates. So, there are some clues being given out.

[00:20:11]I mean, let me let me phrase it this way.

[00:20:14]Least in terms of administrations where it are they is there a possibility they're planning something?

[00:20:26]I mean, your meter is shooting up here.

[00:20:29]It's like when the Ghostbusters would go in and their EKG meter would spot some suspicious supernatural activity.

[00:20:36]Um Again, you don't know that that's what'll happen I guess until the day it's announced.

[00:20:45]Although at least in terms of probability markets, the probabilities are elevated. My radar is turned on and uh so you have that in there and whether you have that or here's the other thing. Let's just say the BRICS nations continue to move away from dollar infrastructure. Let's say the unit doesn't get adopted tomorrow, but the unit again that's the 40% gold backed mechanism that's been proposed.

[00:21:14]Say that that does happen 10 years or 15 or 20 years from now.

[00:21:24]And the West is reassuring based on devalued dollars.

[00:21:30]I don't know, maybe $88,000 gold 25 years from now could be low.

[00:21:38]I guess we'll see, but again if there's one thing I want to leave you with.

[00:21:44]Don't worry, we're not saying goodbye just yet. But if there is as some people put in the comment, who Get to the point already.

[00:21:51]All right, so here you go.

[00:21:55]You get 88,000 just by following what happened the last 25 years and it's a lot easier to see a repeat of that than any reduction. So just the math of the last 20 the current pace it's been on for 25 years you get to 88,000.

[00:22:14]And I might add this is with gold selling off because people are concerned about inflation, oil price soaring, people are concerned about inflation and gold's about 800 bucks lower.

[00:22:27]I think that's the kind of thing that does get sorted out over time.

[00:22:32]I know for a while you didn't want to hear that, but after the last 2 years can be feel however you want if we're off of the highs, but after the last 2 years I wouldn't say that has to change your perceptions of the gold and silver markets. And I think it'd be a shame if you still I know we feel beaten up, we felt beaten up for a long time, crypto's soaring and gold and silver was just sitting there.

[00:22:57]I hope people appreciate what happened.

[00:22:59]I mean, it's wild how quickly the price moved and it seems like another lifetime when we were back in January with $121 silver.

[00:23:08]Although that did happen and and it was especially how you know, then you toss in a war and everything that's been going on since then how can be easy to lose sight of that. Yet especially on the silver side, we still haven't seen these things resolved.

[00:23:24]You know, Michael Oliver is out there calling for three to $500 silver.

[00:23:30]Which on one hand would be pretty wild.

[00:23:33]On the other hand, we just got another set of deficit numbers and perhaps most significantly you still have that spread in Shanghai, which is elevated.

[00:23:44]So it'll be a fun whether rest of this year next couple of years.

[00:23:50]We'll point out again that for all the movement in silver since $121, we've still not been below 50. Still have not been below 60 for that matter either.

[00:24:01]Certainly couldn't guarantee that that won't happen. Yet I mean, we're 6 months in now.

[00:24:09]Safe to say a new range has been set.

[00:24:13]Largely safe.

[00:24:14]For what it's worth, I will be fair in 2011 while people remember the spike to 49 in April.

[00:24:22]But I think it's missed is that it went to 49.

[00:24:26]And May 1st it got clobbered. It was in the low 30s within that week.

[00:24:31]Yet by it did it did rally back up. It spent most of the summer in the 40s.

[00:24:37]And then got a got a little truck there going by, but personally not too much traffic here and anyway, you know, you had the silver price went back up into the 40s. I remember being in Europe that summer, fun little trip I took.

[00:24:56]The year before I left Wall Street.

[00:24:59]And um silver did get back up there. It was fueled in large part by the downgrade of the US debt by S&P. That was their first downgrade back in August of 2011.

[00:25:15]That's a fascinating time period to go back and take a look at.

[00:25:19]And then in the beginning of September in 2011 what was really wild, if you want a quick gold and silver story here. Price had just crossed 1900.

[00:25:31]The Swiss come out, this is like 2 or 3 a.m. East Coast time.

[00:25:37]Cuz you got to remember the European Union was having their own debt crisis back then.

[00:25:43]And it kind of had been looking like, well, the Swiss franc and the and gold were the last remaining safe havens because after the Treasury gotten downgraded, it's like, whoa, they're maybe not as safe as we thought.

[00:25:57]And so then the Swiss come out, I think it was September 6th, 2011.

[00:26:03]And they say they're pegging the franc to the euro, meaning that as the Europeans print, they were going to print along with that.

[00:26:13]Theoretically leaving gold as the last safe haven at that moment.

[00:26:17]And I remember thinking, wow, are we about to see gold hit 2,000 bucks? Remember I was in California. I actually went to meet Rick Rule that week and I had an interview.

[00:26:28]And remember I was up cuz I was on West Coast and gold was soaring and I thought that might be $2,000 gold for the first time.

[00:26:38]Yet you saw the gold price get pummeled that night.

[00:26:42]Same with silver.

[00:26:44]And until last year, that was the first time we had seen $40 silver in quite a while. So um that was kind of what made me wonder whether there was something less than clean happening in some of these markets.

[00:26:59]But anyway, here we are another was it 15 years later? The prices have gone well beyond that.

[00:27:06]So let's see. I think I took I brought a note card to stay focused.

[00:27:14]I think we're about to wrap up here.

[00:27:15]Although one last nugget that I will share with you before we do that is that you also had Hank Paulson who was the Treasury secretary back in 2008 when the housing bubble started imploding. He was out warning about a not just a debt crash in the with US debt, but a vicious debt crash.

[00:27:40]Which again, this is from the guy who said subprime would well, I guess Bernanke said subprime contained. Although Hank Paulson was right there with him agreeing.

[00:27:50]And it turned out they were wrong. Yet now it's extreme enough that even Hank Paulson thinks we could have a bond market crash. And if you go really to the heart of reasons to buy gold or silver, I don't know if it is the same for everyone. Yet my primary reason was that, well, if they're going to keep borrowing, there's no way they can pay it back.

[00:28:13]At some point you think either they're going to print it or the whole thing unravels and that's not ideal for the US dollar.

[00:28:20]So the whole debt bomb we still even It's amazing we're seeing the gold and silver prices we're seeing while the debt has not been addressed.

[00:28:28]So now you have Hank Paulson warning about the debt.

[00:28:34]Not the best of times for the average guy out there in terms of the way we're shaping the world. Yet anyway, hopefully that gives you an idea of some things to think about. I won't to claim to know what the price of gold will be in 25 years, but I will hope that I've left you with some good things to consider as you make your own plans.

[00:28:56]Yeah, those you helped and did such a good job today.

[00:28:59]That's right. He looks thirsty.

[00:29:02]I will add the that for those of you that are investors and certainly many with many people looking to capture the gold and silver rally through the mining stocks like to thank Fortuna Mining who is the sponsor of today's show.

[00:29:18]As we have a another truck pass us by here.

[00:29:23]And I'm going to phrase this appropriately. By all means they're a sponsor, so factor that in. Not trying to pull anything over on anyone's eyes here.

[00:29:32]Yet I mean, it's worked out quite well because in terms of if you're of the school of thought that the gold price is even just going to stay where it is let alone go higher in the future.

[00:29:47]One of the things that I like about Fortuna that I'm grateful for them being part of the show and also in addition to being a shareholder and now current option holder heading into the Q1 earnings.

[00:29:59]It will be in just about a month.

[00:30:01]Uh I also have a investment fund I run for my mom.

[00:30:06]I have a chunk of her money in Fortuna and not trying to convince or persuade anyone what to do yet in terms of you look at a company where they have a track record of following through. They're not taking They're not out there with a shovel and a pile of leverage hoping to hit something or they're robbing a 7-Eleven later that night.

[00:30:32]Especially seeing them build their Seguela mine in the midst of the last inflation wave we had and they did that on time and on budget.

[00:30:40]Now we're getting closer to the construction decision at Diamba Sud.

[00:30:45]Isn't all that far off now? I mean, we're coming into late April here.

[00:30:51]And that could further increase their gold production. And I might add they produced about 7,000 more ounces in the first quarter than in the fourth quarter while the gold price was substantially higher.

[00:31:03]So again, I'm not giving licensed financial advice, but that's why I bought those call options that expire right after earnings. We'll see if I have any success on those. Definitely not a recommendation to trade options.

[00:31:18]That was my background, kids, as a option market maker before before the housing bubble unraveled and I found the only people who'd seen that in in advance were all talking about gold and silver.

[00:31:31]And anyway, here we are.

[00:31:34]I've had some successes in the picking the spots with options and metals.

[00:31:40]Also got my face beat over the head with a shovel at several occasions, so um I'm going small this time. Nothing too wild, but anyway, thank you to Fortuna for being a proud part of our show.

[00:31:54]Thank you at home for watching.

[00:31:56]Hopefully you enjoyed our walk and talk today.

[00:31:59]Leave a comment. Let Let me know if you did and you'd like to see more of these in the future. Hopefully the wind not too much of an issue and did test it before. So hopefully we came through all right for the most part.

[00:32:12]Anyway, in case you were interested in finding out more about Fortuna Jorge Ordoñez, the CEO of Fortuna does join us after their big number releases. He was talking to me after the fourth quarter earnings, which was a record earnings. Talked a lot about what's going on at Diamba Sud. And to make sure that you are prepared if you're interested in learning about mining stocks or in particular Fortuna >> [cough] >> well, just click on the video that's coming right your way now and we're able to tell you a lot more about it.