Einhorn Unhappy if Gold Hits US$30,000 Per Ounce

In his latest televised appearance, Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn sounded an unmistakable warning: Washington’s mounting red ink is now such a swamp that only a fiscal crisis might jolt policymakers into action. “There isn’t even the opening sketch of a plan to rein in the deficit,” he told CNBC on Tuesday evening. “Until that changes, owning gold just makes sense.”

Why Deficits, Not Inflation, Now Drive the Trade

Einhorn’s critique is on the numbers. The Federal shortfall is falling toward US$1.9 trillion this year despite talk of improvement at the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The agency promised to carve out US$2 trillion of savings, but by Einhorn’s math, it has barely uncovered US$150 billion. Tariffs floated by the administration might raise another US$100 billion, but that’s almost nothing against the overall gap. Investors, he argues, are losing faith that Congress will ever balance the books, and that crisis of confidence, not classic CPI-style inflation, has become the strongest tailwind for bullion.

A Price Target with Caveats

Gold’s record-setting rally lends weight to the thesis. Spot metal cracked US$3,300 an ounce in mid-April and is still hovering near that mark, up roughly 22 per cent year-to-date. Einhorn says he would be “happy” to see prices edge toward US$3,500–$3,800. Anything beyond, in his view, would signal the sort of disorderly scramble for safety that hurts far more asset classes than it helps. He voiced that he would not be happy if gold hit US$30,000.

Broader Market Positioning

Greenlight is hardly hiding its plays. The fund made an 8.2 per cent gain in the first quarter, with gold the single largest contributor. At the same time, Einhorn has placed a bet on cryptocurrencies: He is short leveraged exchange-traded funds tied to MicroStrategy while simultaneously holding a long position in the software firm’s common stock. The structure, he noted, exploits the high cost those ETFs incur by buying deep-out-of-the-money options each day. That’s a drain that compounds over time.

Trade Deficit is Not the Real Problem

Einhorn dismissed the trade deficit, calling it “a bit of a sideshow” compared with the budget gap. That stance contradicts the administration’s tariff-heavy strategy, which aims to narrow the trade balance partly through steep levies on metals, machinery and even microchips. “I don’t see why other countries feel any urgency to negotiate,” he said. Until fiscal credibility improves, he believes, foreign partners will keep the United States at arm’s length.

Gold remains Einhorn’s core hedge. His ceiling of US$3,800 implies another 15 per cent upside without assuming crisis-level panic. Fiscal policy, not inflation prints, is the key, according to him, and if Congress shows no appetite for deficit control, bullion’s floor keeps rising.