With renewed U.S. economic sanctions against Iran slated to take effect on Tuesday, Iranians were panicking to exchange rials for gold. The buying frenzy had no discernible effect on the dollar price of gold, which sold off moderately in U.S. markets. You’d have to be an old-timer to recall a day when gold’s price could be pushed one way or the other by geopolitical events.  Nowadays, even financial mayhem in some troubled corner of the world appears to have no impact whatsoever on bullion. Has ‘flight to safety’ come to mean shifting one’s cash into Amazon shares? Sometimes it seems that way. Whereas T-Bonds and T-Notes have their ups and downs, AMZN charges relentlessly higher on most days, providing investors with the kind of returns that have made safety an afterthought. Interesting times, for sure, and not just a little bit wacky.