21 car century insurance: The bad guys know something you don't

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Well, how about this:

The World Gold Council reported that central banks and other official institutions bought a net 289 metric tons of gold in the second quarter of 2026 -- a record for any second quarter, 62 percent more than the same quarter in 2025, and roughly five times what they bought in Q1. (Q3 data is due any day now.)

And they bought it on the way down. Gold's Q2 average ran about 8 percent below the Q1 average, and the Council suggests the softer prices are part of why the buying picked up.

Private investors went the other direction. Gold ETFs saw about 45 tons of net outflows over the same three months.

Here's what this all means: the institutions that can create money out of nothing were busy accumulating the one asset they can't create -- and the public was selling it to them.

This is one of those cases in which I'm inclined to follow what the central banks are doing over what the public is doing. Not financial advice -- just telling you how my brain works.

Gold opened yesterday at about just barely over $4000, its lowest since July, and down roughly 7 percent on the month. It's Fed week, and the market says there's a 90 percent probability that the Fed will hold interest rates steady -- and an 80 percent chance of a rate hike in December.

Now when the financial press explains why a possible hike is bad for gold, they all give the same reason: gold pays no interest, so when bonds yield more, holding metal implicitly costs you more.

That's been one of the key arguments against holding gold. It's Warren Buffett's argument: gold is "neither very useful nor procreative," and just sits in a vault staring at you.

That wasn't a great argument before, but it's definitely a bad argument now, because thanks to Monetary Metals, gold is "procreative" and does generate a yield.

I have a nice pile of gold with Monetary Metals and it generates a yield for me, paid in more gold. You're going to own gold anyway, and now it no longer has to be the lazy bum Warren Buffett used to think it was.

I've known a couple of the guys -- Addison Quale and Jeff Deist -- at Monetary Metals for a very long time; Jeff was actually a groomsman at my wedding (if you're curious, the others were Dave Smith, Michael Malice, Michael Boldin, and Brad Birzer, familiar names to Tom Woods Show listeners). And what they have built here genuinely makes our lives better.

It's true: gold with Monetary Metals isn't the same as gold in your own safe. But these are leases, not loans: the metal stays physically present and monitored, the lessee has to post 10 percent above the leased amount, and if he goes bankrupt tomorrow the gold is still sitting there to be repossessed. You do give up a little control, to be sure, but you get paid for it.

I think it's a very good trade -- in fact I just noticed that my own Monetary Metals account still has my wife's maiden name on it, so long have I been with them (I had forgotten how long!) -- but you decide for yourself.