Gold prices are poised for a "spectacular" and prolonged rally as the recession deepens, Euro Pacific Capital head Peter Schiff said.

That makes gold and gold-related investments the best way for investors to protect themselves against inflation, Schiff said.

“If you really want to grow your wealth, you should own gold in the mining sector,” he told BNW Business Wire. “With gold stocks, there’s obviously a lot of leverage to higher gold prices.

“As millions or billions of people discover gold as a store of value and as a way to escape inflation, there’s going to be tremendous demand and somebody’s going to have to supply that demand. It’s obviously going to have to be mined … companies that have gold and mine it are going to see profit margins explode,” Schiff said.

He said that gold supplies are constrained because mines aren’t as productive as they used to be and there are really no significant new gold deposits coming anytime soon.

“The companies that are already producing are simply going to be able to get a lot more money for the ounces that they pull out of the ground,” he said.

South Africa’s rand fell to its lowest level in almost seven weeks against the dollar, after gold and platinum — the nation’s biggest exports — declined, Bloomberg reported. And gold dropped as much as 0.4 percent to $909.03 an ounce.