What’s With This Gold Price Correction? | Government Spending Off the Rails -

Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.
Coming up don’t miss our interview with Jeff Clark – founder of <a href="https://thegoldadvisor.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TheGoldAdvisor.com</a> newsletter and a globally recognized authority on precious metals. Jeff and Mike Maharrey try to make sense of the recent correction in the gold price and how the impact of war and the potential for rising price inflation as a result of higher energy costs could impact the gold market moving forward.
Jeff also explains the underperformance of the mining sector to the bullion price, and how the lagging effect of the miners is actually telling us that we are still likely in the early stages of this precious metals bull market, despite the recent pullback. He also draws some conclusions about the divergence between the mining shares and the broader equities market and what to make of that puzzling situation.
Jeff shares some interesting comments about all that and much more, so be sure to stick around for a wonderful conversation with one of the most highly respected gold analysts you’ll find anywhere, Jeff Clark, coming up after this week’s market update.
And as a reminder, if you enjoy this material, please do us a favor and like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you consume this content.
Well, the U.S. government is insolvent.
This isn’t hyperbole. In fact, you could call it an understatement.
The Treasury Department recently released its consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025. Uncle Sam ended the year with just over $6 trillion in total assets against nearly $48 trillion in total liabilities.
For you non-accountants out there – that’s not good.
To put it in simpler terms, the federal government has $7.90 in liabilities for every one dollar in assets.
If the U.S. were a private business, it would be in bankruptcy court.
The release of these financial statements got virtually no attention in the mainstream financial media. Forbes was one of the few publications <a href="https://fortune.com/2026/03/23/us-government-insolvent-fiscal-crisis-fix/?tblci=GiCB9a4pBBlehdsJSAXBSvtzY7kC2AKY69BgUiVdqNpQmSDKuWUo-sCAu_nVmNN8MK67Pg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to highlight the numbers</a>. As that report put it, America’s abysmal financial condition was met by “near-total media silence.”
Based on Forbes’s reporting, the U.S. government's financial position deteriorated by $2.07 trillion in fiscal 2025. The balance sheet now stands at an unfathomable negative $41.72 trillion.
The federal financial position was further eroded last year by a $2 trillion increase in the <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/03/19/national-debt-quietly-eclipses-39-trillion-004774">national debt</a> and interest expense payable (now over $39 trillion), coupled with current liability of $438.8 billion for federal employee and veteran benefits.
And by the way, this doesn’t even include the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare.
Forbes ran through the numbers recently, noting that by any accounting standard, Uncle Sam is insolvent.
If you think the word “insolvent” is an exaggeration, insolvency is defined as a financial state where an individual or company cannot meet debt obligations as they fall due (that is, cash-flow) or has liabilities exceeding assets (balance sheet).
The U.S. government meets BOTH definitions of insolvent. And yet the mainstream continues to ignore it. As already noted, the Treasury released the data to the sound of crickets.
When we get these shocking reports, a few people sit up and take notice, but most people shrug. They just continue as if everything is fine.
Ladies and gentlemen, everything is NOT fine.
The massive debt and the relentless deficits are precisely why the Federal Reserve can’t raise interest rates to battle inflation.
Interest on the national debt cost $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2025. The federal government is already spending more on interest payments than it is on national defense or Medicare.
That leads to the second problem: Who is excited about loaning the U.S. money?
The debt matters, and those proverbial chickens will eventually come home to roost. Just because it hasn’t caused a problem yet doesn’t mean it won’t.
The problem with playing "kick the can down the road" is that you eventually run out of road.
Well before we get to this week’s interview let’s take a look at the market action in the metals here. Gold is essentially flat now thanks to a nice rally here on Friday. The yellow metal checks in at $4,504 an ounce as of this Friday midday recording.
Silver was completely flat as well through Thursday’s close, but is now showing a 2.6% weekly gain based on today’s advance of essentially that same amount. Silver comes in at $70.37 an ounce.
Platinum is down 2.7% to trade at $1,882, and finally palladium is down 1.8% to trade at $1,402 an ounce.
Well now, without further delay, let’s get right to our exclusive interview.
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Mike Maharrey: Greetings, I'm Mike Maharrey and I'm joined today by Jeff Clark. Jeff is a globally recognized authority on precious metals and the founder of goldadvisor.com and an all-around great human being to boot. How you doing today, Jeff?
Jeff Clark: I'm doing great, Mike. Thanks for having me on.
Mike Maharrey: Well, it's always a pleasure to have you on the show and always appreciate getting your insights. And boy, it's pretty crazy out there in the gold market. And first, I really want to kind of get your take on the current narrative that we're hearing. And as we're recording this on Thursday afternoon, gold is down once again. And the narrative is kind of that we're having these higher oil prices, so that's going to spark inflation. So therefore the Fed is going to hold interest rates higher for longer. Therefore, gold as a non-yielding asset is something you don't want to have. And a lot of people seem to be in the selling category right now. So kind of what's your take on that narrative? How do you see that narrative in reality?
Jeff Clark: Well, the Fed raising rates this year instead of lowering them, which was obviously the expectation before the war, is realistic. Is it inevitable? No. It depends on how long the war goes. But yes, higher inflation would likely lead to a rate increase, but it's too early to say that. Here's something to think about, Mike. What if the economy from the war, let's say the war drags on and it really starts to impact the economy, would the Fed perhaps not be forced to lower rates in that environment despite a strong dollar, despite oil prices, and despite maybe some elevated inflation? So that's something to think about.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of been my take as well. If you look at the history, anytime we've had any kind of crisis, go back to 2008, we can go to the pandemic. Even back in 2019 or late 2018 into early 2019 when the stock market was kind of getting shaky. The Fed's response seems to be easing. We'll deal with inflation later. So, I'm kind of the same mind as you. I certainly don’t think it's a given. And to me, and does this seem odd to you? We're talking about higher inflation, and I don't even really want to get into right now the fact that rising oil prices, that's not exactly inflation as we've traditionally defined it. We define inflation as an increase in the supply of money and credit, which the impact of that is rising prices. But setting that all aside, it seems to me that selling your inflation hedge when there's a potential for much higher inflation seems … I don't know if that's the wisest move. What is your thought on that?
Jeff Clark: Oh, whether we get inflation or not, you mean?
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. I mean, the anticipation is we're going to have higher inflation, so a lot of people are unloading what has traditionally been an inflation hedge that seems counterintuitive.
Jeff Clark: It is counterintuitive, but again, it's too early to know if we're going to get higher inflation or not. The old price has spiked that could lead to inflation in some items to higher inflation in some items, but we don't know that yet. It depends on how long this goes. My opinion is I think hopefully this calms down in a month or two. And keep in mind that inflation is measured only monthly, so it'll be a little higher in March. If things calm down by the end of April, we may only have two months of higher inflation reading. So that's not even a full quarter. So that wouldn't necessarily lead to higher inflation and government action and selling all inflation hedges.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. And my instinct is, this is purely me speculating, but I kind of feel like that regime change didn't work. And I really feel like both the Iranians and the US government kind of would like an off-ramp on all of this. So I'm with you. I'm hoping that we can have some resolution, not only for the economy, just so we can avoid more loss of life.
Jeff Clark: Right, right. Absolutely.
Mike Maharrey: So do you think that … You spend a lot of time analyzing the mining sector, and that's really kind of your forte. And do you think, and this might be the same answer that you just gave, we don't know yet, but how do you see the potential increase in energy prices impacting the mining sector?
Jeff Clark: That's a great question because it could. The biggest energy cost for a miner is typically oil, not for every miner, but for most of them. But again, we don't know that answer yet because quarterly results are based on quarterly prices. The average annual all- in sustaining costs that we measure for the industry is about $1,500 industry-wide right now. Some are higher, some are lower, but that's the average all in sustaining cost. Well, the average goal price so far in Q1, believe it or not, is a little over $4,500 as you and I talk. That's a roughly 66% margin. Even if go over to average $4,000, which would be lower than where it's even trading now, you'd still have a 62% margin. What industry, Mike, has that kind of margin? It was just at the grocery store the other day, and the margin for grocery stores is like one to 2%.
One of the highest out there you'll find is probably Apple, and it's around 32%, I think I read in their last quarterly results. So the gold industry at the current price after a correction still has a margin of roughly twice that of Apple computer. That's going to attract Wall Street and all that if the common stock market goes into a bear market.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. You make a really good point. My wife was a manager in the grocery world for many, many years, and she often talked about penny profit because really for every dollar they earn, a penny and often even less than a penny is the actual profit that the grocery stores is making. So that in mind, I mean, it seems like this would be a great environment for miners, but you sent me an interesting chart and it shows that the GDX, which is a kind of a conglomeration of miners, it has not broken out relative to the gold price yet. Why do you think that is?
Jeff Clark: Yes, that's a very good point. And I love that chart because it tells me that the bull market is not over yet because when you ratio out GDX to gold, GDX to the NASDAQ, any of those assets, gold stocks as a group have basically not risen yet. And even though they've been in correction mode, many were up double, triple, 5X, 10X, some of that even year to date. But when you measure them and compare them to the NASDAQ to gold itself, the gold mining industry has not broken out in terms of the stock prices yet. We're basically back where we were during the COVID period. It's actually lower now than it was in 2016. We had a little bump back then, but nothing like we've had today, and yet relative to all these other assets, the miners have not broken out. So that tells me, that's the first important point, is that it tells me there is big potential still ahead.
Those ratios would have to change by a factor of three or four, meaning gold stocks rising versus other assets falling. Or if gold doubles, think about that. The mining stocks would have to go up as a group three and four times for that ratio just to get back to where it was in 2011. And 2011, that's not this bull market. This bull market is more like the 1970s. So when you go all the way back to the 1970s and major then, it's even a more dramatic difference. So that tells me there's a lot of potential ahead. So the reason why I think is because … And this is what I'm looking for. I think those charts hint at why we're still lagging, even though the miners have been rising until recently. And that's because the general stock market, the S&P, the Dow, the NASDAQ, all of those markets have not been in a bear market.
They've not crashed. Now, the NASDAQ, as today, as you and I talk, is down 10% from its high, so it's officially in correction territory, they say. But again, it hasn't been prolonged and it hasn't forced those investors, Main Street and Wall Street to come into our sector. Sure, they bought gold because we had a war and we had tariffs, we had all these other crazy things going on. So they bought gold. When those things happen, you don't think, "Oh, I got to pick me up some junior miners." They bought gold. They didn't buy mining stocks. When things calm down and the NASDAQ and the Dow and the S&P go weak, correction territory, bear market, a crash, any of those scenarios. And I think it'll force some of the mainstream and Wall Street investors to start to look at gold mining stocks. I think that's still ahead.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. And you also sent another chart that shows that gold itself has not broken out against the NASDAQ. So what are the ramifications there?
Jeff Clark: Same thing. It's really true. The gold price has basically not risen, which is a crazy statement to make when it was 2000 a couple years ago and here we are at 4,300 as you and I talk. But again, relative to the NASDAQ, the gold price is basically back where it was during COVID. It's lower than it was in 2016. That ratio is actually lower, meaning gold itself relative to the NASDAQ has not risen since 2016. When you look at it in that manner, it tells you, wow, there's a lot of potential still there. It doesn't guarantee that that's going to happen, but it shows you the kind of potential. We're at an extreme. It's near its lows, that ratio, meaning there's a lot of potential for it to catch up. Just to go back to its 2011 level, again, that ratio would have to change by a factor of four, meaning gold rising, NASDAQ falling.
And again, that doesn't count what it would mean when compared to 1979. So extreme potential there, in my opinion.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. It's really interesting too. And I think that if you kind of read between the lines, there was a … I can't remember which one it was off the top of my head, but I was reading one of the notes from one of the big banks and they were basically saying, "Yeah, excuse me. We've lowered our position in gold a bit," but they were still calling for $6,000 gold by the end of the year. So, I think there's still a lot of bullishness even in the midst of this kind of a bearish period.
Jeff Clark: That call, I think, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, came out after the war already started.
Mike Maharrey: It was. Yeah, it was just in the last couple of days that I read that. I think it was just … I can't remember. I'm not going to even try to say because I'll say it wrong.
Jeff Clark: Well, I think one of the factors there is that when you have a lot of institutional and fund managers that leverage the gold price, then when it starts to fall, they've got to scatter and get out and that's exacerbated the decline. So I think there's a little bit of that going on as well, the deleveraging. It's like, Mike, if your car breaks down, then it's going to cost you $5,000 to repair it and you don't know if you're going to spend five grand on that or 50 grand to buy a new car. Well, you got a major expense that was unexpected on your hands. What are you going to do? Well, you might have to liquidate something else. Well, that's kind of what's going on with gold to a certain extent. That doesn't explain at all, but that's kind of what's going on where they have to liquidate other investments.
And in this case, gold is sitting right there, add a profit, and they've probably built up a bigger position than they normally had two years ago, they may sell it and that exacerbates the decline.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've seen that pattern before. In the very early days of the 2008 financial crisis and the early days of the pandemic, we saw extreme selloffs in gold. In fact, I read, I think it was in the 40%, like 43% of the gold bull run that had occurred before the 2008 financial crisis was wiped out in the early days. And then of course, we saw a tremendous run up as we got into the quantitative easing era and those types of things. So we always say history doesn't necessarily repeat, but it does often rhyme. So it's important to put these things in that context. So right now it seems like pretty much the markets are being driven by war headlines. So I'm curious from your perspective, what's something that you think folks might be missing relative to the gold market that's kind of getting buried and covered over by all of the talk about the war?
Jeff Clark: Well, the big assumption is that rates are going to have to fall, but I looked at, or excuse me, rise, but I looked at the recent report just this morning and I think it was 46% of or 44%, somewhere in that range of analysts think that there will be a raise this year. So it's not even 50%, first of all. And something like 60% think the Fed will leave rates alone in April. And that's as of today when you and I are talking. So it's not necessarily consensus that that's going to happen. But again, back to my earlier point, what if the economy actually worsens? What if this really drags on with the war, higher oil prices, it affects the economy, the economy takes a hit. The assumption that rates are going to have to rise, it may just end up being the opposite. The Fed may cut just to help the economy out a little bit.
They may also begin to print money. That's something that's not being talked about at all. So I don't necessarily buy into the assumption that rates are going to rise. They easily could, but I'm not going to assume that's going to happen until we see how this plays out. The second thing I think that's getting overlooked at is bigger picture stuff like all currencies for the first time in recorded history are Fiat. Every single currency in the world is Fiat. How does that play out? Gold is your insurance against that inevitable depreciation or something that blows the system up. So that's not being talked about at all right now. And then of course, nothing's been resolved with the debt or the deficits. We haven't really dealt with any monetary currency, financial issues at all. All of that is still ahead. So while all the headlines every day are about Iran right now, and perhaps deservedly so, but while all that's taking place, you have all these other factors that are just building up bigger and bigger in the background.
And I don't see how those don't play out. So I'm definitely holding my gold. And I like the amount of gold I have, but if you own less than 5% of your assets are in gold, I would be buying right now, especially with this dip.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of people out there that still don't have any.
Jeff Clark: Yeah. I think that they've been given a gift here. You could pick up and you don't have to buy it all right at once, but this is your window to buy it at a much cheaper price. Think about it. Over a thousand dollars less now than it was its peak in late January. So in two months, you have a thousand dollar sale. So I would take advantage of it. We don't know how long this is going to last.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. A $1,000 sale. If you put that as an ad in your clothing store…
Jeff Clark: Thousand dollars are off, right?
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. You wouldn't have enough room to keep all the people in there, right?
Jeff Clark: Yeah.
Mike Maharrey: So, I'm going to ask you just kind of a general, kind of a philosophical investing question. When you get into these periods where there's extreme volatility and you're seeing big swings based, even intraday, based on something that Donald Trump posts on social media or who knows what, how do you advise investors to kind of navigate this? Because I mean, we're all emotional creatures, right? It's easy to get kind of caught up in that and panic.
Jeff Clark: It is, yeah. A couple things. The first thing is, as Jeff Vaulks pointed out in our free newsletter the other day, the Gold Advisor newsletter, he said, sailors don't expect calm water every day. They plan for weather, but they keep sailing anyway. And I think that's a great analogy for a gold investor right now. There's going to be bad weather at times, but you hold onto your position, you buy if you don't have enough, you weather through it. Again, we're playing for a much bigger picture here than just the war in Iran and bombs flying. The bigger picture for gold is well beyond that for some of the factors we've already talked about. So I think you got to keep that in mind. And the second thing I tell people is with incredible volatility comes incredible opportunity. Our mantra here has been to ride the wave, buy the dips.
And so we have a dip right now. We have a big dip right now. So this is an opportunity. It's a window for those that don't have maybe the mining stocks they want or there's some new picks or ones they missed or they don't own enough physical gold or enough physical silver. This is your window. I'm not saying the bottom, the very low is in. I'm saying you have a big sale right now and it's an opportunity to get the same things you wanted, but at a much cheaper price. You could invest the same dollar amount actually and get more. So if you were going to invest $1,000 two months ago, well, now maybe you can invest $1,500 because you can get so much more. So that's the two things that I focus on right now.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Those are fantastic. And as interesting as you were kind of laying out some of the things you think folks are missing. In my head, I'm thinking, yeah, those are all of the reasons that we were buying gold before the war. Exactly. We're worried about the debt. We're worried about the quote unquote debasement trade. We're worried about the potential for economic fallout because we really haven't ever dealt with the fiscal malfeasance of the Great Recession, much less the pandemic.
The pandemic bailed the government out and allowed them to kind of double down on the stimulus and whatnot. So all of those things are still in place. The war is another factor to figure in there, but those other things are still there. And I think that's a really good point. So, I'd love for you before we go to let folks know where they can follow your work, give them the websites and any social media channels you want to promote and anything else that you're doing that you want to tell people about.
Jeff Clark: Well, what I usually tell people is, how would you like to get a mining stock newsletter that focuses on the stocks we own and recommend and that we really like and we monitor and follow? How would you like to get that for free? That's basically what the Gold Advisor newsletter is about. It is free. It's a sponsorship model, so you need to be aware of that. But we also have Gold and Silver, two free newsletters. And then of course we have our paid newsletters, but everything is under the umbrella of thegoldadvisor.com. That's the Twitter handle. That's what it is on LinkedIn. So we're branching out into other social media. We've hired a full-time marketing manager now, full-time admin. We have an analyst on every newsletter now, both free and paid, and we just hired a geologist last quarter. So we're really rocking and rolling, and that's because the demand is there, but it's because I want to do … This is my mantra.
This is what I tell everybody at the company. I will do whatever I can within my power to fully capitalize on this bull market. And that especially includes the correction we have right now. I can tell you that we here at the company have been buying aggressively, so we're taking advantage of it. Our money is where our mouth is. And so if you want to take a look at what we do, that's the first stop to doing that.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. And am I correct that Peter Krauth is now working with you on the silver side?
Jeff Clark: Yeah. We bought Gwen Preston's newsletter almost two years ago now. Peter worked with her. I made a deal with him to come over, so he's working with us now. He has an analyst working with him, but they focus solely on silver. And as you know, up until a month ago, silver was really flying and the stocks were really flying. So they've all pulled back. So there again, there's a window for people if they're interested in those stocks. But yes, Peter's with us too.
Mike Maharrey: People might be interested to know that Peter's going to be with me, I think, next week or the week after. So we'll get to talk to him a little bit about silver. But you guys are doing fantastic work and it's always a joy to talk to you. I really appreciate your insights. And I highly encourage people to visit the website and avail themselves to the buckets of information that you guys are putting out there because it'll definitely help you make decisions. And so it's great.
Jeff Clark: And we both have books as well. They're on the website as well. You can download a PDF, buy them on Amazon. They're not expensive, but those are the books that sort of form the core thesis of what Peter and I are trying to do. So those are available on the website as well.
Mike Maharrey: What's the title of your book?
Jeff Clark: Peter. It's there. It's in the background there. Paydirt: Mining for Profits with Gold and Silver Mining Stocks.
Mike Maharrey: I need to read that book. I've got Peter's book on silver, and I tell people all the time, I think it's one of the best overall looks at the silver market that's out there. He does a really good job of covering that, and I'm sure that Peter is equally good. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I know you've got a lot going on, and I appreciate the fact that you've taken a little bit of time out of your day to join me, and I'm sure folks will enjoy the conversation.
Jeff Clark: Yeah, great. Thanks for having me, Mike, and let's get back together in a quarter or so. And I think the situation will be different by then.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. We'll make that happen, and I'll look forward to talking with you again. Thanks a lot.
Jeff Clark: Okay, great. Thanks, Mike.
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Very good stuff once again from Jeff Clark and I hope you enjoyed that.
Well, that will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. And don’t miss our second weekly podcast, the Money Metals Midweek Memo, hosted by Mike Maharrey and available each Wednesday. To check out any of our audio programs just visit <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts">MoneyMetals.com/podcasts</a> or find them on places like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
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Until next time, this has been Mike Gleason with <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/">Money Metals Exchange</a>, thanks for listening and have a wonderful weekend everybody.

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