Rogan, Musk & Trump Ask: Where’s The GOLD? (Uncut) 03-11-2025

Rogan, Musk & Trump Ask: Where’s The GOLD? | Stefan Gleason

What I’m concerned about is, while it’s great to have some attention to Fort Knox, we don’t need another publicity stunt where somebody goes in, first of all, opens a container they shouldn’t be opening without re-auditing it and saying, oh, the gold’s here, and throwing the credibility of Rand Paul or whoever behind it who wants to go visit it and say it’s all there, and then have this problem persist for decades going forward. Hello and welcome to Sora Financially, a channel where we discuss the macro to understand the micro. My name is Kai Hoffman, I’m the EJR Mining guy over on Xinoforce, your host of this channel, and I’m looking forward to welcoming Stefan Gleason.

He’s the CEO over at MoneyMetals and a long-time listener, first-time caller. Really looking forward to having him on. He’s obviously an absolute expert when it comes to gold and precious metals, and we’ll talk gold today.

What’s moving the price right now, up and down? What are some of the other trends he’s seeing? He’s also an advocate of sound money, of course, so we’ll talk about that concept and how it’s taking hold in the U.S. and whether that trend is accelerating. Really interesting discussion I’m looking forward to. Before I switch over to my guest, hit that like and subscribe button.

Helps us out tremendously and we do appreciate it. It’s free as well. It doesn’t cost you a thing.

We do appreciate it. Thank you so much. Now, Stefan, it’s great to finally have you on the program.

Not sure why we’ve waited so long. It’s good to see you and thanks so much for joining us. Great to be here, Kai.

I’ve always enjoyed your show for years, so thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it and thanks for coming on.

Let’s dive right in. We have lots of topics to cover and we want to zoom in from the macro to the micro, but we’re mostly going to talk gold, of course, and what’s pulling on the gold price. That’s also my first question, Stefan.

We’re right around $2,900 gold. What are some of the drivers of the gold price up and down that you’re seeing right now? Well, one big thing in the macro over the last two or three years has been, of course, central bank gold buying, particularly from Asia, starting and it were really accelerating with the weaponization of the US dollar and the kicking out of Russia of the SWIFT system and all the things around that. That’s been covered on your channel before.

That trend is still very much in place. China is continuing to buy gold. One of our researchers has written about how not only have they been buying very large amounts, pulling bars out of London every month, but even during the period of time last year when the media was saying they were paused, we found trade statistics and import export statistics that prove that China is, in fact, continuing to import, even through that entire period of supposed pause, bringing in large amounts of gold.

And so that’s an ongoing trend happening mostly in the east. That has reversed, or not, I shouldn’t say reversed, it’s expanded in the last month or two. We’re now seeing the West come back into the action.

Of course, there’s been a lot of stuff in the headlines around this trade or tariff related premium that has caused this arbitrage and this movement of gold from London to the US, from other parts of the world to the US. And so I think the headlines have been driving more interest in gold and silver now in the West, not just because of this whole situation with the trade and the arbitrage tariffs and so forth, but also some uncertainty around and fast moving events in Washington around the new Trump administration. And then just the dislocations that we’re seeing across the globe where gold is coming from certain other areas into the US to capture that premium.

And then, of course, just the publicity around it with talk about Fort Knox and so forth. So we continue to see a lot of demand globally. Obviously prices are reflecting that we’re just below still the all time highs, which we keep seem to surpass every few weeks.

There’s just been a correction since mid-February when there was a new high reach. So I mean, gold, it’s very strong. And all of this is happening in the face at least of the last year or two has been happening in the face of a strong US Federal Reserve dollar, but also in comparison to other fiat currencies, but also a strong stock market.

And so, you know, to have gold and even silver perform so well in that environment, which is sometimes, you know, not the case, if not most of the time not the case, is really encouraging. And I think as we move into maybe a mode of stock market correction and recession, it could actually accelerate further gold’s rise. You use the word encouraging, Stefan, and encouraging or scary, you know, there’s two sides to the same coin.

You’re obviously coming from the gold side and being a gold, you own bullion and from the gold perspective. But if you flip it around, what does that mean for the rest of the system if gold is moving up despite a strong dollar and despite a strong stock market? Yeah, that’s a very good point. I mean, bad is good in the gold market.

And I should say I’m a I’m a national, you know, US precious metal dealer and depository. And this high gold price has actually not translated into much in the way of retail buying in the US. In fact, it’s actually translated to more selling because people have been taking money off the table and so forth.

So I guess, yeah, I’m saying that as somebody who owns gold, I’m not necessarily saying that as a gold dealer, because this hasn’t really impacted the precious metals market at the retail level in the last year. I think long term it will. But you’re right.

I mean, gold is a is a crisis hedge. And, you know, there’s been a lot of bad things happening in the world over the last several years, you know, starting with the pandemic and all the things that flowed from that, the inflation, the bank runs, you know, in the US and some of those things that we’ve seen in the news, world war or at least a regional war or threats of world war. These are all bad events.

And gold is a crisis hedge for those things. And I think it’s serving its purpose. Absolutely is, and I think it’s working, especially in countries like Turkey, Venezuela.

We all know the examples. You mentioned the media publicity and the concerns about Fort Knox actually holding gold reserves. It’s just the attention gold has been getting lately.

Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, of course, all talking about gold. Scott Besson can’t avoid the topic either. How much hype is in the gold price right now? And I called it about 10 days ago.

I called it meme gold because I felt the price was starting to get overheated a little bit. It doesn’t mean that the fundamental drivers behind the gold price aren’t still intact. I just saw that it was there was too much noise around it.

And it reminded me a lot of the Bitcoin reserve debate, wherein all the coins or the cryptos and, you know, legitimacy of those coins and cryptos, you know, is a different discussion. But I saw the same hype around gold. And did you see that as well? And how much of that is in the gold price right now still? Yeah, I mean, there’s obviously been a little more attention and that has added a little bit of buying interest.

But I don’t think that gold is very much loved or hyped at this point compared to what it can and probably will be. I mean, it’s certainly not something that stockbrokers in the U.S. are telling their clients they should buy. And we’re 20, 25 years into a massive advance in the gold price.

It’s up over tenfold in measured in Federal Reserve notes. And yet stockbrokers and the mainstream financial people are still belittling it, still talking people out of it, refusing to give them any access to it or, you know, they haven’t, you know, maybe the ETFs, there’s a little bit of that. But but there’s definitely not a hype around gold in the investment world.

So, you know, I don’t think that we’re there may be a sort of a short term overhype, you know, just because it’s getting some publicity. But I don’t think that that’s fundamentally changing or causing what we’re seeing in the price. You know, I think that we could see a little bit of a pullback in like a stock market drawdown, which we’re starting to see in the terms of the stock market.

We’re not really seeing the pullback in gold. Sometimes there’s a short term, a liquidity thing that that causes gold and silver, particularly silver, to decline in that environment. But no, I think I think that we’re well, well before a period of time when you can say that gold is overhyped.

Yeah, it just felt a bit topsy. Yeah, I’m just right at the time, just just based on what I’ve seen in the crypto side is like, oh, I’m seeing a similar pattern here. And I don’t mind a little correction because it’s healthy.

Yeah, like nothing goes up in a straight line. I’m not advocating against gold here. Quite the opposite, actually, because I think it’s quite healthy for gold to take a bit of a breather.

I want to show you a quick video and I showed it once on this program before, but I think it’s still pertinent and really important to our discussion here. And let me just play. Scott Besson was on Bloomberg the other day and talking about the Fort Knox audit and then later on about their gold revaluation.

We’ll get to both of these topics. Let’s let’s start with Fort Knox. One thing potentially that could happen and people are questioning it is maybe remarking gold.

Elon Musk, who’s leading Doge, was talking about maybe going to Fort Knox to make sure those gold reserves are there. That comes under your purview. Do you have any plans to visit Kentucky? I don’t have any plans.

I can tell you that we do an audit every year. I can tell the American people on camera right now that there was a report September 30th, 2024. All the gold is there.

Any U.S. senator who wants to come and visit it can arrange a visit through our office. We got to talk about that statement. And to be quite honest, I’ve never seen one of those reports.

I’ve no idea what he’s talking about. Can you enlighten us? Do you have any idea? Well, it’s a little bit of sleight of hand and he’s may not may not be savvy enough to understand what’s been going on with this and he’s new on the job and so forth. But it is true that there is an annual report put out by the I believe the inspector general of the Treasury, where they have a KPMG auditor that is involved in checking the seals, basically auditing the seals of the compartments where the gold is held in the various faults.

And they publish that report and they say, there you go. There’s the audit. So that does not mean any gold was inspected, assayed, counted, weighed.

There was no examination of whether there’s any encumbrances against them, pledges, leases, swaps and so forth. This is simply basically a paperwork audit. And as money metals researcher Jan Neuwenhuis has written, and in fact, in an open letter to Trump, where he basically said, don’t believe the the gold quote auditors, because there have been tremendous irregularities over many decades in with respect to the things that have occurred with with with the gold and with the audits of the gold.

And in particular, there was a process that began in 1974 that stopped and started and they changed out auditors. And then they had internal auditors instead of external external auditors and all kinds of crazy sort of irresponsible audit type moves that were made over over the about 20 years where they did open up some compartments, open up all of the compartments except for the Federal Reserve, which they didn’t audit at all. But the problem is that they once they sealed these compartments, they reopened them again without explanation, without re auditing the contents and without an accounting of what occurred or why they were reopened.

They changed the seals on multiple occasions, on many of the compartments, basically all the audit no-nos. I mean, I run a large gold depository in Idaho. We’re the largest facility in the western half of North America, money metals depository.

And, you know, in fact, we’re larger than Fort Knox. We don’t have more gold or silver than Fort Knox should have. But but we we have a large facility.

We know all about auditing. First of all, audits are not one and done. Audits are continuous and they’re ongoing.

And there’s practices that have to be followed with respect to dual controls, chain of custody, re auditing things that have been opened. And the U.S. Treasury has violated all of the basic common sense audit rules that should be done. So you really while you could say these seals have been undisrupted in the last 15 years, you can’t rely on that because if you know what occurred to those compartment and with those compartments and with those audits and so forth that are done in the in the two decades prior to that, you can’t rely on that at all.

In fact, and even if you could, you don’t just do an audit three decades ago and say we’re done. I mean, you know, there’s there’s there’s other reasons that you would go back in just for an ongoing sort of best practice. You go back in even though you may have no other reason to do so.

And of course, you know, there’s there’s other problems with the U.S. gold. One of them is that a lot of it is just it’s not liquid. It’s coin melt bars that are 90 percent gold that are comprised of old coins that were expropriated from the American people in the 1930s and then melted down into these bars that are not good delivery bars.

They’re not quality gold. And then more fundamentally, there’s never been an audit or disclosure of any other types of activities involving the U.S. gold, which is probably even more fundamentally important to know than whether all the gold is there, which, like I said, we cannot be we cannot know that because the audits are are are corrupted. But even if we did know that, you still need to know, has it been pledged? Has it been leased? Has it been given to the IMF? Has it been either physically or in other ways rehypothecated in such that there are encumbrances against it? Has it been pledged to the Federal Reserve to back the bonds? I mean, all of these things have to be examined in any responsible audit.

And so it’s it’s patently ridiculous to suggest that the U.S. gold reserves have been properly audited. And even if you if you do think the audits are credible, they were done decades ago. And so it has to be redone.

And and and of course, the whole point of audits is to reassure people. And there’s been everything but the opposite of reassurance has occurred. And it needs to be done properly and it needs to be done presently.

And then in addition, while you’re in there, you probably ought to consider upgrading the quality of the gold reserves to four nines pure. So it’s actually liquid gold. And all of these things need to be done.

And I guess what I’m concerned about is while it’s great to have some attention to Fort Knox, we don’t need another publicity stunt where somebody goes in, first of all, opens a container they shouldn’t be opening without reauditing it and saying, oh, the gold’s here and throwing the credibility of Rand Paul or whoever behind it who wants to go visit it and say it’s all there. And then, you know, have this this problem persist for decades going forward. So, you know, there is federal legislation about to be introduced in Congress called the the Gold Reserves Transparency Act.

And, you know, I’m involved with that. I’ve I’ve been involved in the drafting of it and it would do a proper audit, full assay accounting, look into the security measures, securing the gold, upgrade the gold reserves and also fundamentally look at any encumbrances. And so that’s what needs to happen as to his other comment, that anybody could go and see it.

Well, that’s not true either, at least hasn’t been up to this point. Everybody has been rejected other than Mnuchin 10 years ago, the Treasury secretary who went with Mitch McConnell. So that’s that’s that’s kind of an untruth as well, although maybe he does intend to let people go.

But again, I don’t think that is a good idea in terms of saying this is you know now, oh, it’s there, you know. Well, who owns it? That’s another question. Well, if I don’t know, let’s say Ron Paul or so goes over and Paul, then how would you know if the gold is real or if it’s just tin with some nice color on it? Right.

I mean, I think I think they want a fun field trip, I think is, you know, unfortunately, I think that’s what I’d go into. So we’ll see. Hopefully they’ll do it.

You know, we’ll have a serious audit, whether it’s forced by a federal federal legislation or the Treasury doing it by itself, because that’s the right thing to do. And again, with independent people, there have to be independent auditors. They have to be controls.

They have to follow their procedures for a change. And then if they can do that, then we can we can trust that it’s all there and accounted for. You brought up the Gold Reserve Transparency Act, and I’m quite curious.

The first time I’m hearing about it, I didn’t stumble upon that. Can you elaborate on that just a little bit? What is it? What does it do and how can we follow it and that it gets like. It was like it’s introduced and that’s the right word.

Yeah, it was introduced in a prior to prior congresses in 2019 and 2021 by Congressman Alex Mooney from West Virginia. It didn’t get a hearing. It had I think it had a couple of co-sponsors, but it didn’t go anywhere at this point.

I think there’s a lot more interest and attention. And we’re obviously seeing I expect that another congressman, Mooney, is no longer in Congress. I expect another congressman will be introducing this soon in terms of what it should or does do.

It’s it’s a full inventory, an assay, meaning pulling out the bars and testing them. A review into the security of the gold, although that wouldn’t be disclosed publicly if it implicates, you know, the physical security or creates a disclosure that shouldn’t occur. That’s the only thing that’s allowed to be redacted in the ultimate audit report that this legislation would provide for, again, an upgrading of the gold.

And then that really critically important piece that’s never been considered, never been looked at or at least disclosed, and that is whether there’s any encumbrances against the gold. And then it asks for this process to occur every five years, which is very reasonable. And frankly, you know, it is a lot of gold to audit.

So I can understand a need for time. It could take a couple of years to do the initial inventory and assay and that and especially if there’s refining involved to upgrade the gold. So, you know, this is a pretty important piece of legislation.

It fits really nicely into the theme of government transparency and accountability that we’re seeing, you know, at least over the last couple of months in Washington. So we’re hopeful that it will get some good support once it’s introduced. Yeah, just with that, with the hype around gold right now, why shouldn’t it? And if it’s all about transparency and Doge is really pushing for that as well with Doge.gov and other platforms, it’s interesting.

It might be the right time for it. And I hope it is because it’d be interesting. Maybe one last follow up question on that on the Fort Knox audit.

What happens to the gold price if A, all the gold is there and accounted for and B, if it’s not there? Wow. Well, that’s, you know, I guess, you know, this is maybe one of the arguments that’s been made. I don’t know if it’s flippant or if it’s if it’s a valid argument.

I mean, I guess there’s, you know, the idea that if the gold is not there, that, you know, that’s a national security problem. And maybe that, you know, that’s certainly what some people think is the reason it hasn’t been audited credibly in decades is, you know, there’s a problem. And, you know, but, you know, I think I think that it shouldn’t have any effect unless there’s problems found, you know, other than maybe more attention.

I mean, the fact that people are wondering, is the gold there? And we’re talking about gold as a key asset that should be taken seriously. I guess that’s good for gold. It certainly is something that other central banks around the world are taking seriously when they’re buying it hand over fist.

So, you know, we haven’t bought gold, you know, for decades ourselves. We have 8100 tons in at least the federal government itself. Will, you know, will we see more gold buying going on in the U.S.? I don’t really think so from from an official sector.

But anyway, it’s hard to say. I think it’s a positive. And I guess it’s very positive for the gold price if the gold’s missing from Fort Knox for what it’s worth, because that would represent a significant problem in the United States and the dollar.

Be an interesting scenario, like the ripple effects, the shockwaves, the butterfly effect from it could be insane. It’ll be interesting, the fallout. We still have Scott Besant waiting in the green room to finish his statement here.

Let me bring him back on because he’s going to touch on a second topic I want to discuss with you real quick here. And let me just hit play again. Gold was your biggest holding when you were a hedge fund manager before you divested to become the Treasury Secretary.

So you know the value of where gold is right now versus where it’s marked on its balance sheet, just north of 40 dollars an ounce. It’s close to 3000. Is it under consideration for this administration to revalue gold? I think that somehow when we were talking about the sovereign wealth fund and I said monetize the balance sheet, I can promise you that’s not what I had in mind.

Interesting statement here. He wants to monetize the balance sheet. How else could he do it? What are his options? And what’s even the point of talking about revaluing gold? I do believe him there that he was not talking about revaluing gold as part of this idea of monetizing the asset side of the balance sheet, which is what he said.

I think it has to do with, I mean, there is that gold bond proposal that Judy Shelton has made. I don’t necessarily think that’s what he’s talking about, but that would be another way of monetizing the asset side of the balance sheet by linking government bonds to a gold redemption component, you know, 30 years down the down the path. That’s that’s a viable idea that she has been proposing pretty actively.

And she’s got a lot of support and a lot of she’s thought of very highly. In fact, she was almost on the Federal Reserve in the last Trump administration. She wrote a book called Good as Gold last year.

Anyway, that one possibility. But I think he’s talking more about other assets that the U.S. government has. You know, the U.S. government owns massive amounts of real estate, particularly in the western U.S. And it hasn’t been a very good landlord either.

So, I mean, you know, there’s these all these lands that are being managed or mismanaged by the federal government that might be better managed in private hands. So maybe one aspect would be to look at selling off some land or some assets. The other thing is, you know, with with all these vacant buildings in Washington, D.C. from bureaucrats who don’t show up to work or live in other parts of the country and check in with their mouse jigglers where they they have a little device that proves that there’s activity on their computer when they’re doing something else and they’re not doing their work.

Some of these people may be losing their jobs. Obviously, we’re seeing some of that talk happening already. Maybe there’s some extra office buildings that can be sold to the to the private sector.

So, you know, I don’t know exactly all the things he has, but those are a couple of things that come to my mind. Now, interesting. Somebody mentioned, well, we should sell off Nevada because it’s all public land apparently out there and it might make sense.

Yeah, there’s huge assets. I mean, the other thing would be, you know, unleashing the natural resources in our country, which, you know, have been largely in many cases unable to be accessed. And so there’s you know, we have vast other assets as a country and the federal government doesn’t need to to own all these things.

And probably a lot of them would be better handled by the private sector. Elon Musk was talking about privatization of certain industries as well, which is a different topic to monetize assets potentially. We got to talk impact of tariffs because there’s been a COMEX bear squeeze going on, which has been interesting and it was all triggered by the tariff discussion.

Although I personally think it’s more of an excuse for what’s been happening on the COMEX. I’m really curious what your take on it is. And will the tariffs have any impact on gold and silver here? Well, I think it’s personally I don’t see any evidence that it’s not driven just by the tariffs, at least where I sit.

But then again, we can’t know. You know, it’s been mentioned. I think you mentioned earlier that there’s a theory that it could be Europe is worried about World War and that’s the reason for gold to come out of Europe and into the US.

That’s certainly what happened in World War Two and leading up to World War Two. That’s where a lot of the gold originally came from. It was in Fort Knox, as a matter of fact, because it was way more at a certain point.

So, you know, I think the tariffs definitely drove that premium. There was a short squeeze. People were trying to cover some were using the COMEX for hedging and they were short and they had a physical position somewhere else, probably in many cases outside the country, all over the world.

And then that started moving against them where the spot price was remaining low and the futures price was rising and that fed on itself. And so we saw that premium and then, you know, those that had, you know, hedged positions, they can deliver into that contract or they have to buy it out, which was more painful. So that’s what caused some of that flow.

And then the other aspect, of course, was the arbitragers. And, you know, I’ve seen, you know, where from where we sit in the industry, I’ve seen this going on. I’ve seen the opportunities there are to to play that spread.

And, you know, at the end of the day, gold goes where it’s most adored. It flows in that direction. And over the last decade in particular, that has been mostly Asia.

And so a lot of gold has been flowing out of the West to Asia and it’s driven by the premium. You know, there has been at times a large premium in Asia for gold and silver and particularly in gold, where transportation costs are not that high and it can be flown efficiently. You can place trades in different parts of the globe and capture that arbitrage.

And so gold will flow where it gets that premium. And that’s what’s happened for the most part with Asia lately. That’s that’s pretty pretty stable.

And the premium has been in the U.S. So now now you have the gold flowing to the U.S. That has been coming down a little bit, particularly in gold. There’s still a little bit of a spread or a premium in silver. So this dynamic has slowed down, but it’s still it’s still going on to some level.

And you know what that means. I mean, theoretically, it creates dislocations. You hear about mints in South Korea that can no longer get physical gold because their refineries have sent it all to New York.

So it is causing some disruption, but it doesn’t necessarily fundamentally change the supply demand. It’s more of a logistical question. And that’s so that’s basically where I am.

I think it’s really interesting, but I don’t think that it’s that big of a deal in terms of what’s happening with the price. Bit of a technical follow up to the discussion here, Stefan, is like I think we talked about this on a phone call the other day. It’s I’ve heard from concentrate producers that are producing gold, silver concentrates that they’re not shipping their concentrate to the U.S. for refining anymore, but rather to Canada, bypassing from Mexico to instead of the U.S. to Canada.

I’ve been hearing similar things because nobody knows what concentrate is going to be tariffed or what the tax on that is going to be. Yeah. And I think there’s even though tariffs have now come in, there’s some level of tariffs going on with Mexico and Canada.

That is an issue for those producers. And like silver is about 40, I think 40 percent of the silver that comes into the U.S., if not more, comes from Mexico. And so if there is a tariff on the concentrate or the Dory coming in, then yes, it’s going to get rerouted to Canada or somewhere else for refining.

Now, there’s a lot more gold and silver in the country than there was a few months ago because of this dynamic we talked about. So, you know, does that is that enough to meet the demand that will be ongoing when other gold and silver doesn’t come in because of tariffs? I think it’s all very it’s too early to tell, but that is something that’s causing logistical issues. It’s certainly a concern to mining companies in Mexico who were having their their Dory shipped into, say, Salt Lake City, where there’s a large refinery and having it refined there.

Well, now they can’t do that potentially without a tariff. And so they’re going to route it to Canada and then maybe it’ll never come into the U.S. because until the tariffs, you know, if tariffs are fully applied to these to these metals. But and even that’s unclear.

I have not heard that there’s been a 20 percent tariff on silver, for example. I have not heard that that’s actually been charged. Of course, it’s a fast moving situation.

So that would be a big deal, though. I think if that was a sustained thing on raw materials and the whole idea of tariffs was and is, I think, to like, let’s reconstitute our manufacturing base, you know, and let’s create jobs here. But if you tariff raw materials coming in, I think you’re really, you know, cutting off your nose to spite your face.

You know, you know, the raw materials still have to be processed here. But now there’s refineries in the U.S. that are worried about where they’re going to get their their feedstock. And so that’s going to actually hurt them and hurt jobs.

Analogy I’ve heard is like you shoot yourself in the foot to test the gun. That’s really fitting here. Tariffs.

We need to talk about Trump policies in general. And one thing Trump said over the weekend or indirectly said is he’s not ruling out a recession in the U.S. Like a lot of hardship to come because he wants to right the wrongs. And we will see where that leads us.

But let’s assume the U.S. is or entering a recession. We have to talk about the hypothetical situation, Stefan. What does that do to gold and what is the impact of a recession on the gold price? And as a part B of the question, what is priced in already? Because we’ve been talking about a recession for the last two and a half years.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s fully priced in. I think it may be part part of what’s driving gold. But I mean, you know, you have over the last year a strong dollar and a strong stock market.

Gold is is a competitor to those things. And yet it’s done very well in the face of that. I think a recession is bullish for gold.

I don’t think that necessarily gold accelerates, but I think gold way outperforms stocks. And so the idea of a rotation from stocks into gold, maybe gold goes up just a little while stock the stocks go way down. But if the dollar goes down and that’s a further support for the gold price.

So I think a reset and by the way, a recession almost and certainly is going to be responded to by even more Federal Reserve monetary easing and inflation and possibly bond purchases and so forth, because this is just the economic model that they operate on. Trump, even Trump wants lower interest rates. So all of that stuff, I think, is positive for gold.

So I think a recession, other than, say, a short term liquidity event during a stock market crash or a significant sell off where there’s a rush to cash or something, sometimes there’ll be a parallel effect happening, usually at a much smaller scale in the gold and silver market because of all the leverage, the financial leverage. So if it’s a deleveraging sort of burst over two or three weeks, I could see gold and silver initially fall in that environment, although not as much as other markets. But I think very quickly they accelerate ahead and do do certainly way better than other asset classes.

So I think that’s that’s going to be a positive if there is a recession, a recession positive for the price. Yeah, absolutely. All signs point that way, but we have to talk about the retail consumer or retail demand, which ties into that, because in a recession, everybody’s hurting, especially the middle and lower classes.

We do have to talk about that retail demand. You hinted at it, that retail is selling right now and we’re not in a recession yet. And I look at the World Gold Council ETF gold flows, for example, which is an interesting indicator because the US and Asia have been buying gold.

The ETFs in February. But Europe has been selling. And if I were to take that as an economic indicator, we all know Europe is in the doo-doo.

And while the US and Asia are doing slightly better, is that something like that trend, the retail selling trend? If the US enters a recession, do you expect ETF gold to be sold? But most importantly, the physical to be sold to potentially build a cushion, perhaps or safety? I honestly, I think we’ve been seeing a lot of selling over the last year and a half, particularly in gold at the retail level. And that’s because of one, much higher prices. It came off three years of very high demand.

So there are a lot of new investors, a lot of them made money, you know, in terms of how in terms of dollars anyway in on their gold purchases. And also, I think there already was indications of recession or certainly inflation and people being strapped. So it was a combination of sitting on gains and goal and potentially needing money that was causing that selling.

But I think it was more the gains, frankly, than than the needing the money. Although it depends, obviously, it’s case by case. So I think that, again, I think that we’ll still see selling and we are still see selling now, but it’s not as severe or significant as we saw, say, six to 12 months ago.

So it is slowing down. But what’s interesting, though, is the retail buying is not picking up. So the selling is slowing down.

The retail buying is not really changing. That’s been kind of at a lower level for the last 18 months. And in fact, it’s even been just a little bit lower since Trump was elected, particularly the first couple of months where there maybe was a sense of euphoria.

All of our problems are solved, et cetera. There was there was low demand in November and December at the retail level. We’ve seen it pick up here in January and February.

But I guess the bottom line is that, you know, what you see happening globally in gold prices and gold demand is often very different than what you’re seeing at, say, a U.S. retail level or even at a European retail level. But I guess the bottom line is I don’t think there’s probably going to be more selling because, you know, there’s there’s been a lot. And I think people are recognizing, you know, for example, if the stock market goes down another five or 10 percent, we’re already seeing it the last couple of weeks.

If the stock market continues to fall, we’re going to see more buying on the retail level and and a little less selling. And so I think recession, you know, while people will need money, I don’t think that’s going to lead to a big net sale at the retail level. Yeah, let’s call it COVID CERP churn.

It’s it’s an interesting like, yeah, free free money was given to you, bought silver or gold, gold in particular, which is up close to three. Now, no closer to three thousand dollars. You see the price and you say, well, I bought it at two or nineteen hundred whenever I don’t even know where we were four and a half years ago, gold price wise.

But you’re sitting on a nice percentage gain. So you’re selling. It makes sense.

It definitely makes sense. I’m just going through like we’re jumping around a little bit, but since I have you, you have obviously direct access to the retail consumer. If you were to film a TV show and you’d be standing behind the counter, Stefan, like what would the typical customer look like these days? Oh, yeah, I think it’s still older, definitely older.

And, you know, part of that is because older older folks have more money available to them. I think that’s always been the case. I think they tend to be more conservative, tend to be a little less trusting of the government.

You know, if you’re if you’re left wing in the United States or at least liberal, you tend to trust the government more. And, you know, if you’re in order to to to recognize gold and silver as an antidote to the bad things that are happening, you’re probably a little less you’re more suspicious of government and institutions. And I think that those so that means that the demographic tends to skew conservative for gold buyers.

But, you know, there’s other obviously many other reasons to buy it. But in the U.S., I think that that would be sort of the typical would be right of center older. Now, there is the young people crypto anti-government, anti-fiat currency type person.

But I really they’re not really big gold buyers. It is increasing a little bit, but it’s not as much of an overlap as you would think, even though there are parallels between cryptocurrencies and gold. So but I think the technology people and the younger people are really comfortable with that, that side of things.

And maybe gold is too boring and too old school. So, again, I think conservative, older and, you know, not necessarily large fat cats. I think it’s more it’s more because large fat cats have their financial advisors and their financial advisors don’t tell them to to buy gold because gold is stupid, you know, according to them.

So which which is crazy. I mean, that’s just outright, you know, violating fiduciary duties. The type of advice that you hear that’s given to investors by the mainstream still 20 years into this still anti gold or at least very skeptical of gold.

And it just it’s it’s it’s insane considering the history of that and considering how big the gold market is, you know, and to completely write off an entire asset class is just totally irresponsible. Well, especially it’s a tier one asset as classified by the BIS, the Bank of International Settlement. And it doesn’t seem like everybody has gotten the memo yet.

It’s cash, it’s bonds and it’s gold. That’s it. There’s nothing else in there, Kai.

I think is that, you know, we’ve seen this at money metals, you know, in the in the financial world, they have not figured out how to make money on selling bullion. And one of the reasons is because when people buy bullion, they stop, they they don’t come back a year later and churn it. They’re sticking it in their safe.

They’re sticking it in a vault like ours or wherever. And they’re holding on to it for the long term. And they’re giving it to their kids.

They’re using it as a long term form of savings and asset protection. And, you know, without that churn, you know, it doesn’t generate the fees that, say, a bond portfolio does or a stockbroker who who comes to you every year with your asset allocation. We’re going to you know, we’re going to sell this, buy this.

We’re going to reallocate. We’re going to shift here and there. And, you know, all this little all these dial turnings and churning of the accounts and that generates fees.

And and so I don’t think that I think there’s a vested interest in that class of people to not recommend bullion. And if they if they if you insist on buying gold, then they’ll sell you on an ETF, which, you know, the problem there is there’s counterparty risk. Still, the fees are as high or higher than even storing the bullion would be.

And so it isn’t the best way to do it unless you’re trading, which, of course, is typically the way that that’s brought to somebody is, you know, it’s a short term thing and we’ll turn it later. Now, it’s it’s an interesting discussion why that hasn’t entered the mainstream wealth advisor circles yet. Like it’s it’s an interesting discussion.

But Stefan, you’re also a member of the sound sound money defense league together with money metals. That topic seems to be ringing more and more important or even louder or starts to ring louder every day in my ears. And how has the discussion changed over the last maybe five years since since Covid seems like that topic has gained a lot of momentum? Definitely has.

And I would say that to some extent it has to do with the efforts that that our group and money metals has put in, at least in the U.S., behind promoting state legislation in particular. You know, eight years ago, we had two or three bills. Now we have 15, 20, 30 bills a year passing several a year.

We passed one last week. We passed one last month. Last week, we passed an income tax exemption in Idaho on gold and silver.

Last month, we also had the state of Wyoming pass a gold reserves bill that will require the state to hold gold as a reserve asset, stuff like that. There’s other bills, sales tax. So I think part of it is that, you know, there’s been a concerted effort by money metals and sound money defense league to advance these policies.

And then, of course, a big factor is also just that gold and silver has become more recognized in as in the light of the pandemic, in the light of massive Fed stimulus and devaluation and inflation. And people are wondering what’s happening with their money. And it’s become undeniable that prices are rising dramatically.

Everybody sees it. Even the government statistics, you know, recognize it, although they understate it. And so I think that, you know, people are looking for answers.

And as you see more proposals, you see things getting passed. You see people like Trump talking about gold. You know, you hear Judy Shelton propose things.

You have Rand Paul. You have, you know, just lots more chatter. And I think it’s we’re in a renaissance of of at least a recognition of gold as money.

And I think then the next step is, well, how do we address this problem of the Federal Reserve? And what can people do at the federal or state level to protect themselves from what’s happening? And so, I mean, I’m really encouraged by the transition that’s happened in the last few years in terms of public attention to this. Absolutely. I think even Elon Musk mentioned Rand Paul and mentioned him positively.

I forgot the context, but his name was dropped in the in the context. I don’t have the exact quote or so. Yeah, he said he wants him to audit the Fed.

I think put him in charge of the audit or something for the Fed. And yeah, yeah. Or the gold reserves.

Yeah. So we’re definitely reaching the right ears, in my opinion. So we’ll see where it goes.

Definitely interesting times. One topic we have yet to touch on real quick, Stefan, is silver. What’s going on? Like, why is silver not tracking with gold? And how does it reflect on the on the supply and demand side, mostly on the demand side? Because if I was a buyer of precious metals right now, I’d go for the bargain.

I’d go for silver instead of gold. Like, what are you seeing and why hasn’t silver kept up? OK, well, in fairness, it is tracking gold, at least in the last 18 months. It’s basically it’s it’s stayed with gold.

But you’re right. On the long term basis, silver has been a big disappointment. It also tends to have much higher expectations among those who like me, frankly, who who believe silver is the best bet long term.

But I think, you know, it’s it’s the only commodity that hasn’t reached and surpassed its 1980 high of 50 dollars in the case of silver, which was a short term event driven by that Hunt brothers trading situation. It was really only over 20 dollars, I think, for three or four months. So maybe that 50 dollars isn’t fair to call the high.

But even so, I mean, we’re at thirty two dollars U.S. dollars. There’s been like a 90 percent, 80 percent, if not more devaluation since 1980. So, I mean, the equivalent of 50 dollars is something like two hundred dollars today in today’s today’s currency.

So silver has been a big underperformer. But over the last 18 months, it has not. It’s kept up with gold.

The other thing I think that’s important and important to mention is that we are we’re in a bull, a bull market for gold. And typically, and if not without exception, silver will outperform during a bull market, but it typically does not begin to outperform until a later part of the bull market. And so it’s you know, it’s been keeping up with gold.

The ratio is at 90 to 189 to one right now, which is which is historically pretty, pretty high, meaning silver is undervalued versus gold. But I would expect to see if this bull market continues, which I think it will. I would expect to see silver outperform from from some at some point relatively soon.

But it’s not underperforming at this point. But it certainly hasn’t met the expectations. And I think it will.

But, you know, who knows? I don’t have a crystal ball. Yeah, I know your guess is good as mine. What the trigger could be to set off that silver rally? I have no idea, quite honestly.

I’m puzzled just as you are. Maybe we just need to figure out how to shake that industrial complex. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, obviously, this solar the solar demand is huge. The military demand.

There’s a lot more silver above ground than people realize. It’s it’s it’s not as much. You know, it it’s probably twice as much as gold.

You know, well, arguably it’s not that much. But there are some who say there’s 10 billion ounces above ground. Gold is five or six billion ounces.

But in the crust, of course, it’s it’s, you know, ten to one. So, I mean, you know, there’s there’s gold is almost silver is almost as rare as gold above ground. But, you know, a lot of it is in places that will have to, you know, have to see higher prices for it to come back into the market, whether it be silverware or jewelry or things like that.

You know, there’s only about one and a half billion ounces in the transparent depository network, if that. And so, you know, we’re we’re definitely seeing some good things happen on the demand side for silver. But, you know, as as silver starts taking off, that’s when you’ll see the demand rush from gold to silver, I think.

And that will that will accelerate it. Yeah, one would think so. Absolutely.

I’m with you. I have one last question. It’s a bit of an unfair question to ask a bullion dealer that makes his living off of trading gold and silver.

But what’s a bear case? Like, I’m trying to figure out, like we’ve discussed this, like everything points north. Everything points to a massive gold prize rally. Five thousand, ten thousand, whatever number you want to put on it.

It just trends that way. But what’s a bear case for gold? What could stop that rally? What what what could stop it? Well, OK, so if you take I mean, the bear case would be that, you know, global conflict comes dramatically down. The the U.S. federal government stops running massive deficits and stop.

And the Federal Reserve System is reformed or eliminated. You know, and you start having responsible fiscal policy and responsible monetary policy. You know, I think I think there’s a low likelihood of that.

I mean, there’s been rumblings in the last few weeks that, you know, hey, maybe we’re actually going to be doing some significant reforms of at least the federal fiscal side. I personally think that we you know, we’re not going to get to anywhere near a balanced budget. We’re going to continue to run deficits.

We might slow the increase in deficit spending and the increase in debt. But I don’t think that, you know, I think there’s too much baked in. But I’ve been I was in Washington for 15 years.

So I know how difficult it is to take on the establishment and to see change. But I have been encouraged as somebody who believes in limited government. I’ve been encouraged what they have been doing over the last few weeks.

But whether that is, you know, take that to the logical conclusion of a responsible U.S. government from a fiscal standpoint, I don’t I don’t think we’re going to get there. But that would be a bearish thing. You know, I think I think that’s probably it.

I don’t really see I don’t see that happening, but it could. And, you know, I have to be have to be honest with yourself that there are. And of course, there’s cyclical things as well.

It could be some massive new gold discovery. We could deregulate the permitting process and supply. The supply spigot is turned on dramatically and supply comes in.

But, you know, that’s that’s another bullish factor is that, you know, it’s been gold has been hard to to expand the supply. And same with silver. In fact, it’s been declining in some cases.

So it’s possible, though. The easy gold has been found. It’s not easy.

Costs are going up. So I don’t see anything going or a supply shock. I don’t see that happening.

Yes, China keeps making statements, bold statements about finding millions and millions of ounces in the ground. But, A, they’re still in the ground. B, as part of the global market, I think John Reid from the World Gold Council posted on X about that.

It’s a minuscule impact, even if it’s millions and millions of ounces. I think 100 million ounces or whatever it was in the ground didn’t have an impact on global gold reserves. So one last aspect would be if we had very tight monetary policy and and which they’re not willing to have even, you know, they’re they’re they’re kind of caught right now, but they’re not willing to be very tight and allow for a massive recession and allow for really a clearing out of all the malinvestment in the economy and so forth, which would be very painful for for people.

But it would be also be bad for the stock market. You could see gold and silver go down in price substantially in that environment. But I think even then, just like during the Great Depression, at least with gold, gold will relatively do better than, say, stocks, even if it’s nominally going down.

And so even in a deflationary environment where the nominal price is going down, you would be better off being in gold than just about anything else. But in terms of the price, those kinds of things do impact the price. And so you have to mention that.

100 percent. No, it makes makes sense. We’ve seen it.

Gold crashes when there’s a run for liquidity. But it recovers faster and it completely outperforms when that happens. We’ve seen that in 2020 as a perfect example.

Right, Stefan. It was a wonderful conversation. There’s still lots of topics we need to touch on.

We need to get you back. We need to talk about the gold cartel and whether we’ve broken them. Gary Savage mentioned that on our channel.

And what’s happening in the background. We really haven’t lifted the skirt on the gold trading and how that happens. The COMEX and the shenanigans in the background, whether you, the bullion dealers and the bullion banks are manipulating the gold market.

We got to touch on. We’re going to leave on that cliffhanger here, Stefan. Well, we’ll have we’ll have you back to discuss that.

Where can we follow your work and where can we find more about the Sound Money Defense League? Sure. Yeah. Well, MoneyMetals.com, MoneyMetals.com, we’re a large dealer depository.

We also lend against gold. So if you need a line of credit for business purposes or investment purposes against your gold, you can actually do that. If it’s in our depository, it’s a small combination that we do.

But it’s it’s useful for for those people that need it. And SoundMoneyDefense.org is where you find information about the public policy efforts that we’re doing. And we’re particularly focused in the U.S. a little bit elsewhere, but mostly the U.S. SoundMoneyDefense.org is where you find that.

So MoneyMetals.com and SoundMoneyDefense.org. Fantastic. Stefan, wonderful conversation. And we tremendously appreciate your support of our channel.

It’s it’s it’s great. It means a lot to us. And thank you so much.

And we’ll we’ll have you back. We’ll talk about the shenanigans in the background. Fantastic.

Stefan, thank you so much. And everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in to SOAR Financially. We really appreciate your time.

And I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Stefan Gleason. If you did, please leave a like and a comment down below. And if you haven’t done so, hit that subscribe button.

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Thanks.