Newsletter · 2026-09-10 · Ashutosh Agarwal

Gold Slips as Nations Pull Their Bars Home - Gold & the Debasement Trade - Week of September 10, 2026

Precious-metals podcasts on gold, silver and the miners sliding after a strong jobs report, the Netherlands pulling its gold out of New York while Norway's wealth fund lines up to sell US Treasuries, Brent Johnson's case that drawdowns are part of owning gold, and operators arguing the miners are historically cheap, for the week of September 3 to 10, 2026.

Gold & the Debasement Trade

Week of September 10, 2026: Gold Slips as Nations Pull Their Bars Home

The one-line version: A hot jobs report knocked gold, silver and the miners lower this week, but under the noise, something bigger kept happening: friendly countries quietly moved their gold out of New York, and the world's biggest wealth fund said it will dump ~$80 billion of US government bonds. The bulls call the price dip a gift. The most interesting skeptic on the podcasts this week says the dips are the whole point of owning gold.

The scoreboard this week

It was a down week for hard assets. Using the big exchange-traded funds as the cleanest yardstick:

A few things worth pulling out of that table. First, the miners fell harder than the metal: that is leverage working in reverse, and it is exactly why the miners are a wilder ride than bullion. Second, palladium was the week's biggest loser. Third, long-term US interest rates went up, normally a headwind for gold, because gold pays you nothing, so when safe bonds pay more, gold looks less attractive by comparison.

For the actual price levels, Peter Schiff gave the clearest week-in-review: after the Friday jobs report, "gold plunged about $90… it recovered most of those losses on the day, but it was still down." He had gold closing the prior week around $4,430, the 10-year Treasury yield above 4.81% ("a new high going back to 2007"), the 30-year up to 5.28%, and the dollar index around 99.66 (The Peter Schiff Show Podcast). Schiff also noted that Newmont hit a new all-time high. Gold then kept sliding into this week. For context, it is still roughly a quarter below its late-January record of about $5,600.

Why did it fall? The trigger was simple: the US economy added 162,000 jobs in August and unemployment held at 4.1%, a solid report. A strong economy makes it easier for the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates high (or even raise them), and higher rates hurt gold. As Money Metals' companion episode put it in its title, "Gold Slammed as Strong Jobs Report Revives Rate Hike Fears" (Money Metals' Weekly Market Wrap Podcast).

(Quick glossary, because two terms come up constantly below. The "debasement trade" is the bet that governments have borrowed so much that they will, over time, let their currencies lose value rather than ever truly pay the debt back, so you own hard things like gold instead of cash. "Fiscal dominance" is the idea that government debt has gotten so large that it, not inflation-fighting, ends up dictating what the central bank can do.)

The big story under the price drop: countries are moving their gold home

The recurring, genuinely-new thread across this week's podcasts had nothing to do with the jobs number. It was a string of headlines about countries pulling gold out of the United States and selling US government bonds.

The Netherlands. Mike Maharrey of Money Metals walked through it in detail: the Dutch central bank moved about 86 tonnes of gold (worth more than €10 billion) out of New York and Canada. Mechanically, "the Netherlands sold 59 tons of gold that was stored in New York, and then they used those funds to purchase gold in London," and physically shifted another ~27 tonnes, explicitly as "crisis preparation." The stated reason was that London gold "will therefore be the most readily available… in a crisis situation," while "the gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa cannot be utilized as quickly." Maharrey's read: "countries with historically friendly relations like the Netherlands are beginning to judge the U.S. as a political risk… This isn't Iran or China. This is the Netherlands" (Money Metals' Weekly Market Wrap Podcast). The same move got a mention on Australia's NAB Morning Call, framed around concerns about access to Fed-vaulted gold.

Norway. In the same episode, Maharrey flagged that Norway's sovereign wealth fund (NBIM, the world's largest at about $2.3 trillion) plans to cut its government-bond holdings from 70% to 50% of its bond book, which means shedding roughly $80 billion of US Treasuries (plus about $20 billion of Japanese bonds), likely starting in early 2027. He was careful to add balance, quoting one analyst that this "is not necessarily a signal" of an imminent crisis, a rare bit of "don't over-read this" caution in a very bullish corner of the internet.

South Korea bought gold for the first time in 13 years, and China's US Treasury holdings are down to $652.3 billion, "the lowest level since September 2008." Trader Gareth Soloway tied the whole pattern together on ITM Trading: "almost every major nation that has a fiat currency understands there's an end in sight… countries that are smart are going to realize you've got to move towards gold." His long-term target: $13,000 gold by around 2030 (ITM Trading Podcast).

The connective tissue behind all of it, repeated on nearly every show, is US debt. It crossed $40 trillion, and the government has already spent $1.17 trillion just on interest so far this fiscal year, up 15.5% from a year ago with a month still to go (Money Metals' Weekly Market Wrap Podcast).

The debate worth your time: is the dip a gift, or a warning?

Here is where this week got genuinely interesting, because the gold world's own voices disagreed.

The skeptic who actually explained the drop: Brent Johnson

Fund manager Brent Johnson (of "Dollar Milkshake" fame) gave the single most useful explanation of why gold fell this year, and it is not the one gold bulls usually give. On Eurodollar University, he agreed the debasement trade is real over the long run ("if they didn't want a currency that lost value, they would have stuck with gold") but insisted it "is going to be punctuated by terrifying drawdowns along the way." The mechanism: when the dollar strengthens against other currencies, it triggers a credit squeeze, "basically a margin call on the dollar."

His killer point is about how reserves actually get used. When the Iran conflict created a scramble for dollars earlier this year, countries had to sell something to raise cash. Faced with Treasuries that were down 20–30% and gold that was up 50–70%, "you sell the gold." So Turkey, Russia and the Gulf states sold gold, not because they stopped believing in it, but because "reserves get used when they're needed. And that means they get sold. Gold doesn't help you if you're not willing to sell it." In his telling, "gold did exactly what it was supposed to do" (Eurodollar University). He also threw cold water on a favorite bull chart (the one showing gold is now a bigger share of global reserves than Treasuries), noting it flipped "largely due to price, not units": gold roughly doubled while bond prices fell. Johnson isn't anti-gold, to be clear: on a separate show he said he's owned it as insurance for 20 years with no plans to stop (BTC Sessions).

The "past the point of no return" camp: Gromen and Alden

At the other pole, macro analysts Luke Gromen and Lyn Alden argued the US has already crossed a line it can't walk back. Gromen: the government "owe[s] more money than they are taking in receipts in a hard currency that inflation-adjusts"; he calls it "a Weimar gold reparations problem" (while stressing he is not predicting hyperinflation). His fear is a stampede: once the giant funds "internalize" that nothing stops the deficit, they'll all hit sell at once, "and it's not going to work" (echoing the 1980 Hunt-brothers silver squeeze), after which "they'll close things down for two weeks… and when they reopen, you will own what you own at the new allocation." His advice is to own "bearer assets" (gold and Bitcoin) before that, because you can't reposition during the shutdown (BTC Sessions).

Alden framed it as two possible paths: a sudden "non-linear" reset, or a slow grind; she pointed out that where she is, "official inflation is 15%, and it's just… a normal Wednesday." Her standalone appearance carried the bluntest title of the week: "The US Is Long-Term Insolvent," with debasement as the eventual release valve and "the bond market… absorb[ing] most of the losses" (What Bitcoin Did).

The measured middle: what's actually driving gold?

For a calmer, number-driven take, David Stein's Money For the Rest of Us did the best job explaining why the old rules stopped working. Normally, when "real" (after-inflation) interest rates rise, gold falls: historically a 1% move in real rates meant about a 14% move in gold. That relationship "really has broken apart" since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022: real yields rose more than 4 percentage points, which "should have" cut gold by ~55%, yet gold rose 7%. The reason is central-bank buying, now "over 1,000 tons of gold a year" versus 400–600 tons in 2014–21. Strikingly, he noted just four central banks (China, Russia, Mexico, Morocco) account for most of the "de-dollarization," and together own about as much gold as all other central banks combined, and that the dollar's share of global reserves has only slipped from over 90% in 2000 to the high-80s. "There's not been a mass exodus." On flows: after essentially no inflows through July, $6.4 billion flowed into gold funds in August once the Treasury announced it was doubling its bond-buyback program (Money For the Rest of Us).

From the people who actually run the businesses

Here is what the operators and insiders said, separated from the commentators above, because someone running a mine or a royalty book has different skin in the game than someone with a podcast.

Brett Heath, CEO of Metalla Royalty & Streaming, made the strongest fundamental case for mining stocks (as opposed to the metal) on The David Lin Report. His numbers, citing a Tavi Costa margin chart: the mining sector's profit margins are running around 31%, versus about 17% for the rest of the market ("the healthiest place it's ever been"), yet the big miner fund GDX trades at about 20 times earnings, roughly a decade low, with investors barely positioned (managed-money bullish bets ~43%). "Highest margins in the market, and the cheapest multiples in a decade, and it doesn't seem that anyone's positioned for it." He flagged a technical signal too: the ratio of gold to the XAU mining index just broke out of a 15-year holding pattern, which he reads as mining shares finally set to beat the metal, likely making new highs "well before gold does." On his own corner (royalty companies, which finance miners in exchange for a cut of future production), he noted rising long-term rates are pushing streaming "from an alternative form of financing to really a material part of the capital stack," pointing to the recent Wheaton–BHP stream. And he thinks $4,000 gold is a floor, because central banks "just [leaned] into buying" all the way down from $5,500 (The David Lin Report).

Mike Rowley, CEO of Stillwater Critical Minerals, gave the week's only real look at platinum-group metals from the mining side, timely given that palladium was the worst performer. His updated resource at the Stillwater West project in Montana more than doubled, to about 7.4 million ounces of platinum, palladium, gold and rhodium combined, inside a larger nickel-heavy deposit. The tell for credibility: mining giant Glencore holds a 13% stake and a technical seat, the project sits next to Sibanye-Stillwater's producing mines, and it qualifies for US critical-minerals tax credits. An economic study is planned for next year (The KE Report).

Alex, CEO of Sierra Madre Gold & Silver, gave an operations update on the La Guitarra complex in Mexico: throughput up 34% to 672 tonnes per day, with a new mill to take it toward 1,400–1,500 tonnes per day by month-end and costs falling as the expansion completes (The KE Report).

Rupert Mitchell, a professional fund manager building a "20 stocks for 20 years" portfolio on Money of Mine, offered a sharp read on the two US gold giants. He argued Agnico Eagle screens worse than Newmont on his model only because of stale analyst assumptions: Canadian analysts are still using roughly $2,000/oz gold in their forecasts (versus today's ~$4,300), plus Agnico's heavier spending delays its cash flow, so he manually overrode the consensus, viewing Agnico as the higher-quality "dragon-head" stock. On the royalty giants Wheaton and Franco-Nevada, he was blunt: "incredibly high quality but incredibly expensive… you should have bought them two years ago," but expects at least one streamer and a healthy gold weighting in his final portfolio as a debasement hedge (Money of Mine). Junior-focused analyst Erik Wetterling made the small-cap case for developers Sonoro Gold, Delta Resources and Altamira Gold: near-surface, open-pit projects in Mexico and Brazil (The KE Report).

Silver, the miners, and the "they're absurdly cheap" argument

Several commentators made the same structural point from different angles: mining shares and silver are historically cheap relative to gold, and that gap is the opportunity.

Analyst Michael Oliver laid out the math on Wealthion. The XAU mining index has averaged about 25% of the gold price over decades (in a rough 18–35% band); it collapsed to 4% in 2015 and sits above 8% now, which he calls "the biggest textbook base I've ever seen." Even just getting back to the old floor of ~18% would be "more than a double and a quarter." He argued the miners are "probably the most profitable sector in the US stock market," ignored while everyone watches semiconductors. On silver: it's about 1.6% of the gold price today versus 6.5% in 1980 and 3.1% in 2011, which gets him to a $300–500 silver target, and he favors silver miners over gold miners (Wealthion - Be Financially Resilient).

Analyst-author Don Durrett made the "asymmetric upside" case for miners on Palisades Gold Radio, but with a notable near-term caution most of his peers skipped. He expects a correction first, back to a "$4,200 handle" (his buy zone starts $4,100–4,200) before a Q4 push toward $6,500 and, eventually, $15,000 gold and $200–250 silver. He's candid that mining is "a terrible business" you only own because miners "mine money," and that he expects roughly 7 of every 10 of his ~170 holdings to work, and the leverage from the winners does the rest (Palisades Gold Radio).

On the charts, technical trader Chris Vermeulen noted the miners "broke out and led" gold higher in August (money moving into the leverage play), but he's staying patient: "bullish bias… sitting on my hands." His map: ~$7,900–8,000 gold if it holds, but a drop to ~$3,600 would be "a screaming long-term buy." He's cautious on silver (still stuck below a key average after this year's brutal ~50% drop) and, separately, said flatly there are "no investment opportunities right now in platinum, palladium or silver": they're "not catching a bid," though "we're close" (Sprott Money News; In it to Win it). Trader Francis Hunt was more aggressively long, calling both gold and silver breakouts from "falling wedge" patterns, with a $330 silver target and gold likely higher by Christmas, though probably still below the old $5,600 high this year (Palisades Gold Radio).

Newsletter writer Porter Stansberry offered the contrarian structural preference: own gold, gold streamers and Bitcoin, not miners, arguing royalties' returns are more durable. He also revealed how he personally plays it: heavily leveraged (about $50M in securities against $15M of equity) and shorting more than $10M of Treasury bonds, because he pegs real inflation at 10–12% and can still borrow at 6% (Mining Stock Daily).

The price-target scoreboard (pundits, not operators)

For the record, and with the usual caveat that these are the opinions of commentators talking their book (the round numbers get bigger the further out you go):

The bottom line. The week's price action was ugly, but the more durable signal was in the plumbing: a friendly European ally moved its gold out of New York for "crisis preparedness," the world's biggest wealth fund lined up to sell tens of billions in US bonds, and the interest bill on America's $40 trillion debt kept compounding. The bulls see that as the whole thesis; Brent Johnson's warning is that believing it doesn't spare you the "terrifying drawdowns" along the way: the sell-offs are a feature of how reserves get used, not a refutation of the trade. As Don Durrett put it, this is a bull market, and in a bull market you buy the dips, but he, at least, is waiting for a lower one first.