The appeal of gold continues to be one of many amusing aspects resulting from the human inability to reason with any degree of adequacy. Merely because it does not tarnish and therefore seems to ordinary people somehow magical, gold has been imbued with an erroneous notion of "value" for thousands of years.

And yet, in reality, it's just a fairly useless metal. The fact that nations such as Russia continue to imagine it to be a wonderful asset merely indicates how backward-looking Russia's political elite happen to be. It says precisely nothing whatsoever about the US dollar.

Now, the US dollar will continue to weaken as the world's reserve currency, but for reasons entirely unconnected with lumps of shiny metal. Ongoing political instability resulting from the neofascist Republican Party's decision to shred all civil and political norms, combined with a loss of dominance in key sectors, means that the USA cannot sustain the dollar in its Brecon Woods role.

This does not mean, however, that the world will return to an era of pretending useless lumps of metal have intrinsic value.