"It has never been easy to have a rational conversation about the value of gold," wrote Ken Rogoff in a 2010 piece titled $10,000 Gold?.

But with the national debt passing $16 trillion and the Federal Reserve launching a unlimited quantitative easing, the gold bulls will increasingly tell you that the sum of their fears are coming true.

In this week's issue of Barron's, Jim McTague spoke to Guggenheim Partners Scott Minerd:

Hedging against the most pessimistic case without crippling the upside potential of a better or even miraculous case appears to be as unsolvable as the proverbial Gordian knot. Alexander the Great "solved" the intellectually challenging knot riddle by severing it with his sword. Scott Minerd, chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, offers a more reasoned but equally simple solution to the hedging conundrum: gold.