In our opinion, when the make-believe world of synthetic gold, algorithmic trading, ETFs, fake interest rates, and passive investment collide with the realities of an uncontrollably rising budget deficit and mismatches between surrogates and underlying assets, gold (the real asset) will benefit. To us, it is obvious that the US and other Western governments are simply printing money to service their own debt. When is the tipping point of public recognition of these facts? Perhaps as soon as 2018 or 2019. The catalysts will be higher inflation and interest rates, and lower financial-market valuations. There is no way to predict the moment, but it seems to us that an eventual loss of confidence in paper currencies, including the US dollar, is inescapable, and most likely coming sooner rather than later. It is not, in our opinion, too soon to embrace exposure to gold.