, Columnist
Gold Keeps Winning the Battle With Economists
Proving the economists wrong for a century/
Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Gold is trading near $5,000 an ounce. And yet, in the middle of US and Israeli war on Iran and as foreign central banks sell Treasuries to defend their currencies and bond yields rise instead of fall, the precious metal has barely budged even as the world's monetary authorities — the very institutions built to make gold obsolete — buy it at the fastest pace in a generation.
This is not supposed to be happening. The economics profession declared gold a "barbarous relic" a century ago and has spent most of the time since trying to make that verdict stick. It keeps losing.