For years, the financial news space has been flooded with narratives of dollar doom, an incoming hyperinflation, and gold winning once the U.S. currency finally dies.

According to Brent Johnson, founder of Santiago Capital and author of the “Dollar Milkshake” thesis, that framing gets the world backward. Investors, he argues, should spend less time asking how the monetary system ought to work and more time studying how it actually does.

“Regardless of what our morals or what our wishes tell us the world should be, this is the way it is,” Johnson said. The global economy is still built around the dollar, not because the U.S. has pristine finances, but because every other major country has its own debt, demographic, political or market constraints.

That’s why Johnson rejects the idea that the dollar and gold are mortal enemies. In his framework, they can rise together — and a surging dollar may be more destabilizing than a weak one.

Gold Doesn’t Need a Dollar Collapse