Rare, malleable and immune to corrosion, gold made an ideal source of money before the development of modern currency. The impulse to hoard bullion as a hedge against inflation is one that many seem to find hard to resist, but the notion that the world is running out of the stuff is not. Yet that was the suggestion by the president of Barrick Gold, the world's largest producer, who spoke this week of “peak gold”, sparking headlines about the world running out.

This is absurd. Rising prices or faltering mines do not equal scarcity. Indeed, even investment “demand” is mitigated by price as one need only buy a fourth as much of it as a decade ago to keep actual physical purchases constant. It is not really demand in the same sense as other finite commodities because gold is almost always just being held in order that it might later be sold, to a greater fool, at a profit.

Contrast this with oil. Every year, over four times as much gold is mined and over twice as much recycled as is actually needed by industry, while annual crude supply more or less equals demand for oil. Global oil stockpiles would satisfy just 48 days of crude demand, while the 163,000 tonnes of gold that the World Gold Council estimates are above ground would last 375 years, or nearly 3,000 times longer.