The Man Who Called Gold 'Pointless'
How one unguarded moment in a vault revealed everything about elite values
There are 400,000 gold bars in the Bank of England's vault.
Each one worth roughly $500,000.
Total value: $200 billion.
Mark Carney looked at humanity's oldest store of value and called it "pointless."
This is the story of how three seconds destroyed a central banker's credibility forever.
The Moment
Picture the scene: The basement vaults of the Bank of England. Three-foot steel walls. 5,500 tons of gold bullion gleaming under fluorescent lights. The weight of millennia of human trust in precious metals.
Standing among these bars that have preserved wealth through wars, revolutions, and the rise and fall of empires, Mark Carney - Governor of the Bank of England, architect of global financial policy, author of books on "values" - uttered three words that revealed everything:
"That's... pointless metal."
Not worthless. Not outdated. Pointless.
As if the collective wisdom of every civilization that ever chose gold as their store of value was just... missing the point.
The Revelation
This wasn't a policy statement. It wasn't prepared remarks. It was an unguarded moment of honesty from someone who has spent decades managing the very system that has made gold seem "pointless" to central bankers.
Because when you can create money from nothing, everything else becomes pointless.
When your career depends on people believing that pieces of paper (or digital entries) have the same value as physical gold that took millions of years to form and thousands of years of human labor to extract, then gold becomes your enemy.
It's not pointless. It's threatening.
The Values Question
Carney loves to talk about values. He's written entire books about them. About how "value is built on values." About integrity, trust, and serving the public good.
But actions reveal values more clearly than words ever could.
When you call the thing that people have valued for 4,000 years "pointless," you reveal what you actually think about those people's judgment.
When you dismiss the store of value that has survived every monetary system collapse in history, you reveal what you think about monetary history.
When you mock the asset that people buy when they don't trust institutions, you reveal what you think about that distrust.
You think it's pointless.
The Institution Problem
The Bank of England was founded in 1694. It has survived:
- The South Sea Bubble (1720)
- The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)
- Two World Wars (1914-1918, 1939-1945)
- The end of the gold standard (1971)
- Black Wednesday (1992)
- The 2008 financial crisis
It has survived because people trusted it to preserve value.
But what happens when the people running that institution reveal that they think your store of value is "pointless"?
What happens when the guardians of monetary stability mock the thing people turn to when monetary stability fails?
You get a crisis of trust that makes 2008 look like a warm-up.
The Global Context
While Carney was calling gold "pointless," here's what was happening in the real world:
Central banks were buying gold at the fastest pace in 50 years.
China added 390 tons of gold to reserves in 2022 alone.
Russia, India, Turkey, and dozens of other nations were accumulating gold as fast as they could mine or buy it.
Even the Bank of England itself holds 310 tons of gold.
So let me understand this: Gold is so pointless that every central bank in the world wants more of it? Gold is so worthless that the bank Carney ran keeps $17 billion worth of it?
Either every other central banker in the world is an idiot, or Mark Carney revealed something he wasn't supposed to.
The Technical Reality
Gold isn't pointless. It's perfectly suited for its role as a store of value:
Durability: Gold doesn't rust, corrode, or decay. The gold in Egyptian tombs is as pure today as it was 4,000 years ago.
Scarcity: All the gold ever mined would fit in a cube roughly 25 meters on each side. You can't print more gold.
Divisibility: Gold can be divided into smaller units without losing its properties or value.
Fungibility: One ounce of pure gold is identical to any other ounce, anywhere in the world.
Recognizability: Gold has been instantly recognizable as valuable across all cultures and time periods.
Portability: High value-to-weight ratio makes it easy to transport and store.
None of these properties are "pointless." They're precisely why gold has served as money for millennia.
The Real Pointlessness
You want to know what's actually pointless?
Negative interest rates that punish savers.
Quantitative easing that inflates asset bubbles.
Central bank digital currencies designed for surveillance.
Climate policies that require destroying prosperity to save the planet.
Financial systems that require infinite growth on a finite planet.
Monetary policy that creates wealth inequality while claiming to solve it.
Books about "values" written by people who mock what the public values.
That's pointless.
The Historical Pattern
This isn't the first time monetary authorities have dismissed gold. It's a pattern that repeats throughout history:
1933: FDR called gold hoarding "unpatriotic" before confiscating it.
1971: Nixon called the gold standard "obsolete" before abandoning it.
2001: Gordon Brown called gold a "dead asset" before selling half of Britain's reserves at the bottom of the market.
2023: Mark Carney called gold "pointless" while inflation ravaged people's savings.
See the pattern? When monetary authorities attack gold, it usually means they're about to do something that makes gold ownership more important, not less.
The Public Response
How did the public respond to learning that a central banker considers their savings "pointless"?
Gold prices hit record highs.
Coin dealers reported surge in demand.
Bitcoin adoption accelerated as people sought alternatives to central bank control.
Trust in institutions plummeted further.
The public understood what Carney revealed, even if he didn't intend to reveal it: The people running the monetary system have contempt for anyone who doesn't trust that system.
The Deeper Implication
Carney's "pointless" comment wasn't really about gold. It was about power.
Gold represents independence from central bank control.
Gold represents the ability to store value outside the banking system.
Gold represents a vote of no confidence in fiat monetary policy.
Gold represents everything that threatens central banker authority.
Of course they think it's pointless. From their perspective, anything that reduces their power is pointless by definition.
But from the public's perspective, anything that preserves wealth when central bankers destroy it is the opposite of pointless.
It's essential.
The Values Inversion
Here's the real inversion of values:
Carney thinks gold is pointless and fiat money is valuable.
The public increasingly thinks fiat money is pointless and gold is valuable.
Carney thinks central bank authority should be unquestioned.
The public increasingly questions that authority.
Carney thinks he knows better than 4,000 years of human monetary history.
The public thinks 4,000 years of human monetary history knows better than Mark Carney.
Who do you think is right?
The Choice
You have a choice about whose judgment to trust:
The collective wisdom of every civilization that ever chose gold as their store of value.
Or the individual opinion of a central banker who benefits from you not owning gold.
The track record of an asset that has preserved wealth through every crisis in human history.
Or the promises of people who create money from nothing and wonder why you don't trust them.
The market judgment of billions of people who still buy gold when uncertainty rises.
Or the institutional judgment of someone who calls that behavior "pointless."
The Bottom Line
Mark Carney's "pointless" comment revealed more than he intended.
It revealed the contempt that monetary authorities have for public judgment.
It revealed the arrogance that comes from controlling the money supply.
It revealed the disconnect between central bank priorities and public needs.
It revealed why people are right to distrust institutions that mock their choices.
Most importantly, it revealed why gold isn't pointless at all.
In a world where central bankers can create unlimited amounts of money, destroy the value of savings through inflation, and call your store of value "pointless" without consequences...
Gold becomes the most important asset you can own.
Because the alternative is trusting people who think your financial independence is pointless.
The man who called gold "pointless" just made the case for owning gold better than any gold dealer ever could.
🏛️ When institutions mock what you value, it's time to value what institutions can't control.
💰 Because your savings aren't pointless. Their credibility is. Carney's credibility is. (Meanwhile, since he wrote his "Values" book, he's become Prime Minister of Canada).