DESPITE last week's crash to $1325 per ounce, the gold price is still set to surge and reach $10,000 according to French investment and London bullion bank Société Générale's global strategist Albert Edwards.

Writing in his weekly Global Strategy report, Edwards says that US quantitative easing – better known as "money printing" – means that "rapid inflation surely beckons". But not until the current weakening in US economic data becomes a new recession, leading to yet more money creation by the US Federal Reserve.

That will force the rate of interest paid by US Treasury bonds – what Edwards calls "a key driver" of the gold price – still lower, as confidence flees the equity market.

"We repeat our key forecasts of the S&P Composite to bottom around 450, accompanied by sub-1% US 10-year [bond] yields and gold above $10,000."

SocGen's commodities team recently called "The End of the Gold Era", forecasting on April 2nd an end-2013 gold price of $1375 per ounce.

Edwards' new report acknowledges that forecast, calling it "prescient" and a "rare exception" to the financial community's usual tendency to stick with the consensus view.

"In that [same] vein," writes SocGen's global strategist – and with gold price 10% below the level when Patrick Legland and Michael Haigh's report was issued – "holding gold is a bet against central banks' competency.

"Given their track record, that's certainly a bet I'd be happy to still take."