An excerpt from Mike Maloney's The Great Gold & Silver Rush of the 21st Century:
"So now let's add it all up to try to estimate just how much currency could come chasing gold and silver...versus 1980, today we have:
-18 times more people around the world that can buy precious metals
-55 times more currency
-56 times more millionaires
-200 times more billionaires
-220 times more available consumer credit
-31.5 times more assets under management
-49 times greater global stock market cap
"...it really doesn't matter that there's 55 times more currency in the world. What matters is that almost all of the newly created currency went to people who were already well off, people who have significant assets to protect and therefore have an investor's mindset. These are the people who will seek the safety of gold and silver in the next crisis, driving their prices to unimaginable heights.
"...let's say that there's probably 50 times more currency available today for investment in gold than in 1980. Yet the amount of gold in the world has only about doubled, so that's 25 times more currency per ounce. Then, to that 25 times more currency per ounce we must add the speed of light news and market dynamics, and that gold and silver are Giffen goods that create more demand as the price rises, and the fact that their price responds positively to war, geopolitical crises, economic crises, and just about anything else that causes human anxiety...and you can still only get a tiny little inkling of just how big this thing is going to be.
"If the bull market of the 70s drove gold up 25 times and silver up 41 times with only 1/25th the amount of currency per ounce chasing them, and then you add fear to the mix, just what do you think will happen this time around?"