Gold could hit $3,000 an ounce in the future, almost double its current per-ounce prices, if the United States doesn't cut spending and stop flooding its economy with cheap dollars, says Fox Business personality Eric Bolling.

Gold prices have surged in part on recent fears the U.S. government was teetering on the edge of default.

Both political parties agreed on terms to lift the government's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and pay bills. But hefty government spending remains an issue, as does the fallout from monetary policies that called for printing money and injecting it into the economy with the aim of fueling growth.

"This gold price will go up to $2,000 or $3,000 going forward but it may blip down because everyone thinks we may breathe a sigh of relief because the debt crisis is averted for now," Bolling told Newsmax.TV.

"We are still outspending what we take in," says Bolling, who was a commodities trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange and has vast experience on Wall Street trading commodities, equities and derivatives.

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Gold rose to a record $1,675.90 an ounce Wednesday in New York on signs that the U.S. economy is faltering amid debt woes, boosting demand for the precious metal as an investment haven.

The Federal Reserve recently wrapped up a $600 billion bond buyback known program known as quantitative easing, which boosted money supply to make the economy grow, and monetary policy officials have said they cannot rule out similar programs should the economy remain weak and warrant such movements.

Such moves not only make already-cheap dollars even cheaper but also drive up inflation rates at a time when global food and fuel prices are also already high.

"They are more than willing to continue to try and stimulate the economy through quantitative easing. Flooding the economy and the market with cheap dollars, all it does is it drives the price of things we have to buy up," Bolling says.

Federal Reserve officials insist its policies aren't hiking up core inflation rates, which are stripped of volatile food and energy prices and are largely used to determine interest rates.

That doesn't matter to Main Street America, Bolling says.

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High food and energy prices can squeeze a family budget regardless of what the Federal Reserve, or anyone else, says.

"The consumer price index excludes food and energy. Well guess what has been skyrocketing over the last year and a half to two years? Food and energy," Bolling says. "Food prices are off the charts. We're up 30 percent in meat prices. We're up 27 percent in some of the produce prices."

If the government does want the economy to grow and create jobs, it needs to keep taxes low and clear up uncertainties scaring businesses away from hiring people, especially the Obama administration's healthcare overhaul law that threatens to increase costs on businesses.

"The only way to solve the unemployment problem is to clarify the economic environment going forward and that means we need to know not a year down the road or not a year and a half down the road, we need to know five- and ten-year windows down the road what our taxes are going to be like," Bolling says.

Gold Stays Bullish

Such economic uncertainty continues to bring in more gold bears, other experts say. Some say the precious metal will soar as high as $1,800 per ounce by the end of 2011.

"Gold is an excellent hedge in troubled times" in view of European and the U.S debt woes, says Mike Frawley, the global head of metals, according to Bloomberg.

Asia will drive demand for all metals in general.

"Millions of Chinese people are moving from the countryside to cities annually and that migration is leading to new jobs and new wealth, and the money is being invested in various opportunities," Frawley says.

"And you add to that the growth and modernization of India. The outlook for metals is very positive."

No Greek Tragedies, Please

While debt burdens are a concern, the United States was never really on a path that would make the economy resemble that of Greece, which, despite having tapped several bailout payments, continues to roil markets over fears that its financial system may crumble and wreak havoc across the rest of Europe.

For Bolling, the United States still had the means to pays its bills during the debt ceiling crisis, and ratings agencies were probably not going to make good on their threats to downgrade the U.S. from its AAA ratings, at least during the crisis.

"I don't think we're going to get downgraded, but let's just play the game and say if we are, the problem is we're the most important nation, we're the most solvent nation, believe it or not, with $14 trillion in the hole, we are still able to pay that debt."

"Investors from around the world came and bought American debt. They bought American debt, which means they drove interest rates down. So this argument of we needed to raise the debt ceiling so we didn't default or get downgraded is frankly disingenuous at the very best."

Still, the United States remains stuck in a recession and hopefully, that will all change in 2012.

"Technically we are still in a recession. Maybe not by the Harvard economist definition of two quarters of negative growth but ask the 9.2 percent of America, the 14.5 million people who are out of work whether we are in a recession," Bolling says.

"If the fiscal conservatives take over the Senate — it really doesn’t matter what happens in the White House — in 2012 and lead us to a path of smaller government, where we don't outspend what we take in as revenue, that's the only way America will get back on its feet and start to grow again."