Inflation Is Unstoppable: Gold & Silver Are Your Only Protection | Michael Howell Interview

**Mark** (0:00)
This video is sponsored by Terrahutton, who make the invisible, investible. My name's Mark, and you're watching Resource Talks weekly news roundup for the week ending June the 7th, 2026 This week, US regulators granted a waiver to speed up the restart of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant from Microsoft data centers. Markets began pricing the possibility that the Fed's next move could be a hike, and gold bar and coin demand was forecast to overtake jewelry demand for the first time.
And joining us to make sense of it all is Michael Howell, founder of Cross Border Capital.
His work focuses on global liquidity and how the movement of money through the financial system helps shape market cycles. He spent decades tracking the forces that sit behind asset prices, from central bank policy to the plumbing of global finance. And at the end of the conversation, I'll ask him how he'd invest $100,000 in this environment. So, Michael, thanks for being here.

**Michael Howell** (1:00)
Well, Mark, hi.

**Mark** (1:00)
Great pleasure to be here.
Metals Focus says, physical gold investment is set to overtake jewellery as the biggest source of gold in this year for the first time in its data. It expects bar and coin demand to rise 15% left by China, old jewellery demand falls 11% and central bank buying drops 15%. So, Michael, I want to get your insights as to what this shift from luxury buying to investment buying tells you about gold, and more importantly, from your unique focus about where we are in the liquidity cycle as well.

**Michael Howell** (1:40)
Well, I think what it says above all is that investors are getting pretty uncertain and maybe pretty scared about the prospects of inflation. Gold is a brilliant monetary inflation hedge. It basically hedges the actions or the nefarious actions of central banks in printing money and destroying the value of their currencies. And that has been proved time and time again over the centuries. And it's happening again before our eyes.
The Federal Reserve has got the money printer out.
The Europeans have got the money printer out.
The Chinese have got the money printer out. And basically, that's the risk looking forward. So it feels to me that we're in an environment pretty much like the 1970s, where it's, you know, you're seeing, obviously people are feeling inflation pressures in the high street. But actually behind that, the rate of monetary inflation, which is a slightly different and maybe higher level concept, is actually growing at a much faster rate. And we're beginning to see the high street or main street prices catch up. And you can see that through the sort of the sequence of increasing commodity prices. I mean, if you just ask the question, which is always a good question to ask, what is my personal inflation rate? I'd say it definitely isn't the 2% the central banks try and kid us about. It's way, way higher. And you need protection. Gold is a great protection.

**Mark** (3:06)
Another story in Precious Metals this week came out of India where they tightened silver import rules requiring prior approval for some forms of the metal. And that comes just weeks after the country doubled import tariffs on gold and silver to ease pressure on the rupee.
So I suppose my question is if investors and households around the world are looking towards Precious Metals like you say for protection against the nefarious actions of governments with the printing press, do you think that then that leads to a reaction in the sense of fairly draconian methods in this case of import taxes, outright restrictions, and maybe even bans on buying Precious Metals?

**Michael Howell** (3:51)
Without question. Governments can do anything they can. The simple reason is that they need to get themselves funded. The biggest challenge that central banks and finance ministries have is basically selling their debt. They're going to get at any lengths they can to make sure they sell it.
Just look what happened in America in 1933-34. They basically confiscated gold.
It's probably difficult to do that exercise again. But that was clearly robbery from the private sector. And as soon as the government stole the gold, they revalued it higher.
So they got a double windfall, if you like, in terms of that exercise. But you see what the Indians are doing is, well, I'm saying more or less the same thing. It goes down the same track. I mean, they're just trying to effectively attempt, at least, to demonetize gold. But you can't demonetize gold. Governments have tried many, many times to do that. But it never happens. You can't demonetize gold in the private sector because people realize it's true worth.