There are two things you can count on central bankers doing. First, they’ll do whatever they can to protect their wealth. Second, they’ll make decisions that may have detrimental effects on the “average” people if doing so will benefit them. That’s not to say central bankers are necessarily evil. They’re simply driven by a singular focus which is why they got into the business of central banking in the first place.
It is a best practice for investors — whether they’re brokers, “average” Americans with market-based retirements, or anywhere in between — to be watchful of what central bankers are doing. They have inside information. They pay a lot of smart people a lot of money to predict what’s going to happen. And most importantly, they have access to many of the financial levers and dials that determine how the various markets respond to events. This is why it should raise eyebrows to notice that central banks are in the process of buying as much gold and silver as they can get their hands on.
On today’s episode of The JD Rucker Show, I introduced our newest sponsor, Jonathan Rose from Genesis Gold Group. While we touched on his company briefly, our focus was on the economic turmoil the world is currently embroiled in and how this all ties back to the geopolitical machinations of world leaders, central bankers, and the powers-that-be.
Here is an article by Nicholas Anthony from FEE that breaks down what we’re seeing today:
Central Banks Are Purchasing Gold at Record Highs. Why?
The World Gold Council reported that central banks bought a historic high of 374.1 tons of gold this year.
As reported by Dion Rabouin at Axios, an unprecedented shift toward gold has been led by the financial authorities of the world in what appears to be a move away from the US dollar.
The World Gold Council reported that central banks bought a historic high of 374.1 tons of gold this year. While this move accounts for only 16 percent of total gold demand, it offers an inside look into the minds of the central bankers. It was only seven years ago that a survey of economists revealed significant disagreement with regard to the potential benefits of a gold standard. Do central bankers not agree with leading academic economists or is a different motive at play?
The Evolution of Money
The history of money has featured coins made from precious metals, privately issued IOUs that could be redeemed for precious metals, and government-issued IOUs that could similarly be redeemed for precious metals. Many have speculated that cryptocurrencies are the next step in this evolution, but could it be gold that is looming over the horizon?
Many have speculated that cryptocurrencies are the next step in this evolution, but could it be gold that is looming over the horizon? Although the history of money has trended toward greater degrees of government control, this new trend of gold accumulation raises many questions.
Is a Gold Standard Feasible?
In the Cato Journal, Lawrence White explores how the world might transition to a new gold standard. He notes two possible paths. First, a parallel gold standard could be allowed to grow alongside the current fiat currency. Alternatively, there could be a transition date in which a currency is then defined as some amount of gold.
While network effects require a painful inflation to occur for fiat currencies to lose their incumbency advantage, White explains that the second path offers an opportunity for a smooth transition.
For the switch to be effective (i.e. not cause inflation or deflation), the new parity will need to be based on the current price of gold. In one case, the Russian currency is the ruble. The ruble currently trades at 100,826.22 rubles per ounce of gold. With the Russian money supply around 9,339 billion rubles, the country would need to purchase 92,624,716.07 ounces of gold.
That number looks menacing, but a quick conversion cleans it up. With 32,000 ounces in a ton, that number becomes 2,894.52 tons. And this is a maximum amount that would be required with a 100 percent reserve ratio, not the historical ratios observed under both private and government banking. At a 20 percent reserve ratio, the requirement drops to only 578.9 tons! In terms of feasibility, that is less than 1 percent of the world supply of gold.
A Golden Hedge?
Rather than implementing a gold standard, it is also possible these countries are looking to insulate themselves from the US economy—a difficult prospect. When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, one could get their investments out of a country with a few days’ horse ride. Unlike the majority of tasks over time, this has become much more difficult.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an increase in gold purchases as part of a “fiscal fortress” policy.
The global economy is more integrated than ever, and this integration hit center stage when the Great Recession rippled across the globe. With the US dollar on one side of most trade and utilized as a base in the majority of currency exchanges, there is little escape from the US economy.
For this reason, China has made calls for an IMF currency to replace the dollar as a global reserve currency. It is possible, due to the lack of traction this policy recommendation has received, that they simply decided to enact safeguards by investing in the original global reserve currency. In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an increase in gold purchases as part of a “fiscal fortress” policy of high reserves and low external debt.
Could Gold Be a Signal?
One last consideration lies in the state of modern international trade. Whether gold is being accumulated as a currency or an asset, the movements have not gone unnoticed. With hostility growing in the US-China trade war, it is possible the purchases are being made for leverage.
In game theory, opponents can make threats and promises, but this is mostly considered cheap talk. There’s no cost to say it and there is no cost to receive it. So, why not do it? It is for this reason that no player will change what their strategy is in response to cheap talk. However, signaling is a different matter. A credible signal is costly and separates the aces from the jokers.
Accumulating gold is a costly, credible signal.
In the case of the US-China trade war, China could use gold holdings to dump the dollar. If so, the US would incur a cost much higher than the revenue from tariffs levied on Chinese businesses and American citizens. By accumulating these holdings, China signals that coordination is a better long-term policy.
Closing Thoughts
The classical gold era featured lower mean inflation, smaller price level uncertainty, global network benefits, and fiscal discipline. These benefits are undeniable and enough to warrant a monetary authority’s attention. However, this is not to say it is the only thing worth their attention. The danger in leaving economic theory and entering practice is that there is an entire world full of complex dynamics to account for. Whether recent gold accumulation is merely a demonstration of political weight to leverage trade policy, a hedge against market turbulence, or a move toward a new gold standard is yet to be seen.
Nicholas Anthony
Nicholas Anthony is the Manager of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives.Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, he received a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Business Administration from Towson University, and a Master’s Degree in Economics from George Mason University.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
