Analysis: Why is everyone buying gold? Another financial crisis in the background?
Express newspaper
09/10/2025 7:30
By Ferruccio de Bortoli/ The price of gold has broken the $4,000 per ounce barrier. Some media outlets are reporting that some (such as Goldman Sachs) expect the yellow metal to reach $4,900 per ounce by the end of 2026. At the beginning of this year, the level was just $2,600.
Gone are the days when, under the fixed exchange rate system (which ended in 1971), an ounce of gold was worth a handful of dollars (just 35). A veritable rush to buy gold seems endless and has raised some questions about the stability of the international financial system.
Gold is mainly bought by central banks of those countries that believe that the US currency will no longer be at the center of the global financial architecture of the future. That is, the banks aim for a total reversal of financial powers and the construction of a new balance that will not have Western (and democratic) countries at its center.
Of course, gold is a traditional safe haven in times of geopolitical crises (and we have many of those today), but investors’ choices should reflect the weakness of financial markets, which, despite real and trade wars, are at their peak, driven in part by expectations of the Artificial Intelligence revolution. A total paradox.
That’s why, without wishing to be a prophet of doom, this excessive euphoria has something pathological about it. Perhaps not an “irrational euphoria,” as then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan described market trends just before the crash, but something not very different.
The Bank of Italy, with 2,452 tons, has one of the largest gold reserves among industrialized countries (larger than France, for example), which are undoubtedly essential for the stability and credibility of the euro. Their value has tripled since 2018 and exceeds 250 billion euros.
There had been discussions in the past about whether it would be appropriate to sell some of this gold. Fortunately, there was no move for that because now those who proposed it would be crucified. Of course, perhaps today would be the right time to do so, given that gold is now at its highest level.
But at a historical moment like this, you can never be too careful. What John Maynard Keynes called a “barbaric relic” is still a highly sought-after asset today… to do nothing with. /Prepared by Lapsi.al
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