Miles Franklin Media – YouTube, Released on 2/16/26

Michelle Makori, President & Editor-in-Chief, Miles Franklin Media, sits down with James Rickards, New York Times bestselling author and editor of the Strategic Intelligence newsletter, for a conversation on gold, artificial intelligence, and the growing risk of a global monetary crisis. Rickards explains why a move to $10,000 gold by the end of 2026 would not surprise him, breaking down the math behind gold’s accelerating price moves and why the most explosive phase often comes last. He also warns that the world has not yet entered the “retail frenzy” stage. The discussion then turns to a far more unsettling risk: AI-driven market instability. Rickards outlines how deepfakes, automated trading systems, and algorithmic decision-making could trigger market panic in minutes and why traditional safeguards like circuit breakers may no longer work in an AI-dominated system. Michelle presses Rickards on whether an AI-triggered meltdown could collide with a global monetary reset, amplifying bank failures, liquidity shortages, and systemic risk across the financial system.

(Timestamps are below the video)

00:00 Coming Up
04:05 Why Gold Has Rallied
09:40 The Math & Psychology of a Fast Move to $10K
13:06 Catalysts That Could Turbocharge Gold: Retail Frenzy, Shocks & AI Risk
14:52 Gold Revaluation Buzz: Could Trump Reprice U.S. Gold Reserves?
31:12 China’s Yuan Ambitions & Hidden Gold
38:36 BRICS Settlement Layer
40:17 MoneyGPT: AI in Finance & the Hidden Fragility of ‘Same’ Algorithms
44:35 Deepfake Fed Chair Scenario
50:37 Why Circuit Breakers Fail in the AI Era
53:22 After the Crash
01:04:23 Investor Playbook: Real Diversification Across Asset Classes
01:07:04 AI Meltdown vs. Global Dollar Shortage & Monetary Reset
01:13:55 Final Wrap

Jim Rickards is a lawyer, investment banker and economist with over thirty years’ experience in capital markets. He is currently Chief Global Strategist at Meraglim. He advises the Department of Defense, the U.S. intelligence community, and major hedge funds on global finance, and served as a facilitator of the first ever financial war games conducted by the Pentagon. A frequent guest on financial news programs, Rickards is also the author of The New York Times bestselling novels Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis and The Death of Money. His latest book is MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy.

  AI, gold, investing