Video News/In Focus with Jeremy Szafron

(Kitco News) - The US government benefits from inflation even as it punishes ordinary savers, and that fundamental conflict is why gold remains essential, according to Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars and MoneyGPT and editor of Strategic Intelligence. Speaking with Kitco News, Rickards said inflation favors the debtor, and "who's the biggest debtor in the world? It's the United States of America," meaning Washington has every incentive to inflate its debt away at the expense of people trying to preserve their purchasing power. He argued central bank buying, led by Russia and China, underpins gold but that the bigger move comes if large institutions raise their allocations, creating what he called an "asymmetric trade" with limited downside and significant upside. Rickards stressed that owning gold through futures, options or ETFs is not the same as owning the metal, warning "you don't own gold, you have a contract." He also pointed to Russia surviving Western sanctions in part because roughly $150 billion, about a quarter of its reserves, was held in physical gold, and said he sees a compelling setup forming in silver.