[mothballed]

Generally agree but I'd note politically influential rich should generally prefer productive assets, while people expecting to have to shove the most valuable thing they can find up their ass while running past machine gunners at the border will generally prefer gold.

Gold is totally irrational if you think you'll have the reigns of the country, since you will always win having land and factories under that scenario.

It signals the rich think they're losing control.

[supertrope]

At the governmental level non-Western aligned governments are reacting to freezing of Bank of Russia assets. Freezing of foreign currency reserves was really unexpected. Russia was forced into default because they could not access their USD/EUR.