Printing money is merely taxation in another form.

There are no checks and balances if the gov is wrong. If a private entrepreneur makes a mistake, he goes bankrupt, the losses are cut; if he bets wrong, he loses; if the gov bets wrong, they just get bigger, they just appropriate more money. It's a bottomless pit, because they either get it from the tax payers or run it off a printing press.

Yes, when they're buying there are more buyers in the market and that's supportive of the price. The more buyers you have, the firmer the price is going to be. When central banks were selling it was a headwind the market had to overcome. Now it's a tailwind that central banks are joining the buyers.

You don't drive an economy by consuming - the consumer is not the engine, the consumer is the caboose.

At some point, the dollar has to give. You can't just keep printing money, and monetizing debt, and buying bonds, without the dollar imploding.

Miners produce the bullion. If there is going to be more demand for gold from investors and central banks, where is the gold going to come from? They have to dig it out of the ground and sell it. As the price of gold goes higher, their profit margins increase. So if you are very bullish like I am and think there is going to be a big increase in gold, it's a huge opportunity for miners.

Central banks are choosing to increase their gold holdings as a percentage of total reserves. They obviously think there is a reason to do that. It doesn't make sense to back up one currency with a hoard of other paper currencies. There needs to be a real anchor there. I think that central banks are well behind the curve. If you look at the percentage of above-ground gold controlled by central banks, it's historically low. Hence the fact that central banks are trying to increase their holdings. They've got a long way to go to get where they need to be.