News Items is a daily newsletter founded by longtime newsman John Ellis years ago. It is the “first read” for many because its 15-20 items cover the news waterfront and include links to the stories from dozens of news platforms as well as specialized journals. It’s a bracing bucket of cold water most mornings.
Including Tuesday’s. The first item reads:
“Gold rose to a record high — the 50th day it’s done so this year — on escalating geopolitical tensions and prospects for more US rate cuts. Silver also set an all-time peak. Spot gold climbed as much as 1.2% to just below $4,500 an ounce, extending gains after its biggest one-day jump in more than a month. Traders are betting the Federal Reserve will follow three straight interest-rate cuts by lowering the cost of borrowing again next year, which would be a tailwind for non-yielding precious metals. Gold’s haven appeal has also been amplified in the last week by rising geopolitical tensions.” The summary linked to a Bloomberg story.
Then, three paragraphs down the News Items column, came this summary of a Reuters story:
“China is likely to have loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles across its latest three silo fields and has no desire for arms control talks, according to a draft Pentagon report which highlighted Beijing’s growing military ambitions. China is expanding and modernizing its weapons stockpile faster than any other nuclear-armed power. The report added that China’s nuclear expansion was ongoing and it was on track to have over 1,000 warheads by 2030.”
Could the two stories be connected?
For as long as there have been markets, there’s been a market for gold. “Gold bugs” don’t trust much in the way of investments other than gold, so they are always buying, and this year, bad news stories seem to always push gold higher from wherever it was a month earlier.
Fears of an “AI bubble,” like the dot-com bubble, which peaked in early 2000, have also been buoying gold purchases this year, as did global instability for the years before 2025, led by the invasions of Ukraine by Russia and of Israel by Hamas and the subsequent big battles that have followed.
Now, China looms as a threat to global stability and not just because of its rapidly expanding nuclear weapons stockpile but also because of the extraordinary surge in the size of its navy.
A second superpower to rival the U.S. military does not have to end in conflict. But if Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping orders the invasion of Taiwan, it may or may not be successful, and the United States may or may not be obviously involved in the defense of Taiwan.
If Xi said “Go,” however, that would certainly wreak havoc on the island nation and its people, its economy, and the world’s economy, as Taiwan’s exports of semiconductors and other critical products around the world would screech to a halt, and China would almost certainly be expelled from the world’s financial institutions. Such a conflict could also rapidly escalate, or simply end up in a mire of missile and drone exchanges as devastating as that which has unfolded in Ukraine and Russia.
No wonder gold has hit these records. The rising tide of “risk” seems to be everywhere and the U.S. has only recently responded with visible investments in the weaponry of war and vivid demonstrations of the willingness to use that military in devastating fashion “Operation Midnight Hammer,” in which U.S. B-2 bombers destroyed Iran’s underground nuclear weapons program was a reminder to everyone that the American reach is long indeed and its munitions stockpile varied and deadly. The Islamic State group was reminded of the same after it dared kill two American soldiers and a civilian last week.
The price of gold is far from being a prophet. It doesn’t even reach “Oracle of Delphi” status because the ancient world would get some mumbo-jumbo whenever it sought guidance from the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo. The price of gold is mute about the “why,” and interpreters of it are just as likely as fortune tellers to be right.
THE FIGHT FOR SOCIAL SECURITY SURVIVOR BENEFITS
What is knowable — what is in fact beyond debate — is that American military power and the military power of its allies, such as NATO countries, Israel, and our Pacific partners, help keep the world stable. American deterrence depends upon our arsenal. 2025 was a very good year for American defense because of investments made by President Donald Trump and Congress, investments that are going to increase in 2026.
China, and to a lesser extent Russia, have touched off a global arms race that requires both upping the quantity of weaponry at hand and innovation in the U.S. and its allies’ tactics and weapons systems. 2025 is ending with blinding clarity about Cold War 2.0. If you were reluctant to accept that reality, ask yourself about the price of gold and China’s vast military expansion.