I Invited a Priest on My Show to Argue Against Gold. Here’s What Happened.

Most of you know where I stand.‍

I believe we are living through a long-term debt expansion that governments cannot realistically unwind. Deficits keep growing. Demographics are deteriorating. Since 1971, fiat currencies have steadily lost purchasing power. History is not subtle about this.

That is why I own gold.

So inviting Fr. Emmanuel Lemelson back onto the podcast was not about finding confirmation. It was about pressure testing my own thesis in front of an audience that largely shares it.

He is a rare guest. A Greek Orthodox priest who also runs a hedge fund and approaches markets through strict balance sheet analysis and margin of safety discipline.

And he walked into the conversation ready to challenge almost everything our audience believes about precious metals.

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The Contrarian Case Against Gold and Silver

He argued that much of the precious metals trade has become an ecosystem built around fear. Promoters, storage solutions, premiums, insurance, podcasts selling protection against collapse. His point was not that gold has no role historically or geopolitically.

His argument was that many investors are not actually analyzing anything.

They are reacting.

I don’t think that’s universally true, especially among serious resource investors, but the criticism landed.

He described “stacking” as something that can drift into hoarding. Not always. Not everyone. But enough that it deserves examination.

That is where we disagreed.

Because I pushed back with what I think many investors feel but do not always say out loud.

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Why I Still Own Gold in a Debt-Driven World

Owning gold makes me feel better about the system we are operating in.

When governments continue to expand debt and central banks keep printing through crises, gold functions as insurance. You do not buy insurance because you expect disaster tomorrow. You buy it because you know incentives eventually matter.

Central banks themselves continue accumulating gold. That alone should at least make investors curious.

But Emmanuel’s response was interesting because he did not really attack the macro argument.

He targeted behavior.

He argued that if fear is the primary motivation behind an investment, it can crowd out real analysis. That investors are sometimes substituting narratives about collapse for the harder work of measuring value and compounding capital.

Where the conversation actually made me pause was silver.

His thesis was fundamentally driven. Rising prices force industry to adapt. Engineers and procurement teams work around expensive inputs. Demand is not static simply because a narrative says it should be.

Anyone who has watched commodity cycles long enough knows that substitution risk is real.

That does not invalidate the bullish case for metals.

But it does complicate it.

What I appreciated most was the nuance.

He acknowledged that miners are a different conversation. When you analyze companies, cash flow, management and balance sheets, you are engaging intellectually with capital allocation rather than simply storing metal in a vault.

That distinction matters.

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Speculation vs. Value Investing in Today’s Markets

The line that stuck with me most was simple.

“When everyone becomes a financial genius, be a little worried.”

We have seen versions of that before. Housing in 2008. Dot-com stocks in 1999. Anytime a trade becomes identity instead of analysis, risk quietly builds underneath it.

Here is where I landed after the conversation.

I still believe debt expansion and demographic decline are structural forces investors cannot ignore. Hard assets still have a place in my framework.

But owning gold should not replace thinking.

Insurance is useful.

Productive assets compound.

And the real danger in any market, including one you fundamentally believe in, is when conviction turns into comfort.

That is why conversations like this matter.

Not because they change your thesis.

Because they make you sharpen it.