The global financial architecture is undergoing a fundamental structural transformation. Mining-industry legend and Franco-Nevada co-founder Pierre Lassonde, in an extensive interview for Kitco News, stated that gold will inevitably replace the US dollar as the "currency of last resort." By his calculation, over the next three years the metal's price could reach a phenomenal $17,250 per troy ounce.

1. A comparison with the 1970s and the US debt wall

Lassonde draws direct parallels between the current macroeconomic backdrop and the late 1970s, when — amid simultaneous rises in inflation and interest rates — the price of gold increased tenfold. Today's situation, however, is aggravated by a critical factor: the unprecedented volume of US government debt.

"In 1981, when Ronald Reagan had just taken office as president, the entire combined US national debt was $1 trillion. Today $1 trillion is the sum the United States is forced to spend purely on interest payments every single year, because the total debt is rapidly approaching $40 trillion," Lassonde notes.

Macroeconomic indicator	Current value / forecast	Impact on the gold market
Total national debt	~$39–40 trillion	Erosion of trust in the dollar's fiat system
Net interest payments	~14% of all federal spending	Fiscal burden forces the Fed to monetise the debt
US budget deficit	>7.9% of GDP	Continuous issuance of new dollars creates a permanent tailwind for gold

Against current spot prices around $4,700–$4,800 per ounce, Lassonde is convinced the metal remains fundamentally undervalued relative to the scale of the unfolding crisis.

2. The $17,250 target formula: the Dow / Gold ratio

Lassonde's target is not a random number but the result of mathematical modelling of long-term cycles. The forecast is based on the return of the historic Dow-Jones-to-gold ratio (Dow-to-Gold) to its critical low of 2:1.

When trust in paper assets and equities collapses under the weight of debt, capital floods en masse into real values. The ratio's return to 2:1 at the current scale of the stock market is precisely what brings the gold price to the $17,250 level.

3. Gold as the "currency of last resort" and the Eastern vector

The global trade-settlement system is actively moving away from the US currency, accelerating de-dollarisation.

• Parallel infrastructure: China has successfully built an independent payment system to bypass Western sanctions. By Lassonde's estimate, this ecosystem grows by 50–100% every six months.
• A change of asset status: "In 90% of cases gold behaves like an ordinary commodity, but in the remaining 10% of the time it transforms into the currency of last resort. When the dollar can no longer fulfil that role, gold takes its place," the investor explains.
• Pricing migration: real physical price discovery is gradually shifting from London and New York to the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE).

The central-bank vacuum cleaner. Regulators have become the dominant force in the physical market, raising the share of gold in their reserves from under 10% to over 20%. Central banks now absorb almost half of all global mine output — about 1,700 tonnes of the roughly 3,800 tonnes produced annually.

4. The hidden lever: the colossal undervaluation of gold-miner equities

Lassonde devotes particular attention to the catastrophic gap between the price of the metal itself and the capitalisation of mining companies.

• A fivefold margin expansion: current share prices of gold producers do not reflect at all the fact that their margins at current metal prices are capable of rising fivefold.
• Criticism of the giants: Lassonde sharply criticises the conservative strategy of giants such as Barrick Gold and reproaches Canadian pension funds for their lack of investment in the country's own resource sector.
• The investment Grail: in an era of total electrification and raw-material scarcity, Lassonde calls combined copper-gold deposits the absolute "nirvana" of the mining industry.

Analytical conclusion

Pierre Lassonde's interview frames a hard long-term bullish case for gold. The current price records are merely the prelude to a large-scale monetary shift. The fiscal impasse in the US, reinforced by accelerating debt-servicing costs, strips the Fed of room to manoeuvre. With trust in the dollar melting away and the East taking control of the physical metal, the $17,250 bar ceases to look like fantasy and becomes a mathematically grounded finale for the current decade.