At some point, retail demand for physical gold will overwhelm the fantasy-land paper price. Paper gold (shares in gold ETFs for instance) is easy to turn into fiat, just as the post-1913 dollar (until Nixon ended all pretense that the dollar was gold-backed in '71) was actually fiat despite being advertised as not, even during the period up 'till Roosevelt ended dollar-gold convertability for US citizens and essentially confiscated gold -- because the FED was inflating the currency from Day One, though slowly enough that they got away with it for decades.
The public isn't spooked enough yet, nor educated enough, to stampede to their local coin dealers (and other metal merchants) and start changing their ever-dwindling supply of dollars for precious metals -- at least not in the numbers needed to move the price more than it already has.
At some point, retail demand for physical gold will overwhelm the fantasy-land paper price. Paper gold (shares in gold ETFs for instance) is easy to turn into fiat, just as the post-1913 dollar (until Nixon ended all pretense that the dollar was gold-backed in '71) was actually fiat despite being advertised as not, even during the period up 'till Roosevelt ended dollar-gold convertability for US citizens and essentially confiscated gold -- because the FED was inflating the currency from Day One, though slowly enough that they got away with it for decades.
The public isn't spooked enough yet, nor educated enough, to stampede to their local coin dealers (and other metal merchants) and start changing their ever-dwindling supply of dollars for precious metals -- at least not in the numbers needed to move the price more than it already has.
That'll change.