One may argue that the USD is -more- overvalued, but with wages what they are right now, CPI-inflation (and the price of gold) are both very unlikely to take off in the near future. The only way would be because of the influence of foreign central banks.
One may have to prepare to wait 30+ years to ever get the same purchasing power gold currently has, again in the future.Why?
Here:
Gold's recent collapse in value has done nothing when compared to the absolute slamming American workers have got since 2000. Right now, the average person simply cannot afford to accumulate any gold whatsoever. Meanwhile, gold is secretly near an all time high in value, once you take into account the deflation the dollar has experienced. This graph actually makes it look -BETTER- than it really is, as this measures
wages vs. gold, as opposed to
cost of employment vs. gold, which is a better measure of the total benefits a worker receives. I would have used cost of employment vs. gold, but there isn't enough historical data to have a good reference point. Anyway, the real cost of employment vs. gold is even worse, as people have been shifted to part-time and thus no longer get any benefits outside of wages.
Now one can speculate that gold is in fact cheap as it makes up a small portion of american's savings. However, this is not true either.
Its not quite as dire looking, but still, not very pretty. We're near a long-lasting resistance point that has only been broken once in history. And notice that corresponded to what was almost surely a bubble in the gold price, even when looking at the first chart.
In short, there is no way gold can rally right now unless foreign entities can suck out all the gold from the American economy, since Americans simply don't have the financial capacity to absorb any supply placed on the market.
Also, let me remind you of the absolute lack of correlation between the value of gold (in both charts) and recessions. Gold seems to hold a relatively constant -average- value whether or not the US moves into a recession or not, unlike the US Dollar. However, in return for its constant value, gold is much much more volatile.
One may have to prepare to wait 30+ years to ever get the same purchasing power gold currently has, again in the future.