Jim Rickards on similarities between Greece and the US, gold as an alternative currency

I'm having trouble finding a Greek metric where the US isn't as bad or worse, or will be shortly. You look at where our deficit-to-GDP ratio is, you look at where our debt-to-GDP ratio is going, money creation and other things-- we look a lot like Greece.

One big difference is that we can print our own money. But where does that get you? That's really the problem world-wide.

In every asset class, investors no longer think about the fundamentals, they think about government policy. In China, the question is, can the government prop up the housing market? In Europe, can the government prop up Greece? In the United States, can the government prop up the banks? We don't think about the fundamentals or balance sheets anymore.

[The US dollar and Treasuries] are the only place to go, but there are limits to that. The G-20 and the leaders may try to go to the IMF and SDRs to take the dollar off the hook, the market may go to gold on their own. So, it's kind of a race between SDRs and gold.

~Jim Rickards, senior managing director of market intelligence, Omnis Inc., CNBC Squawk Box, May 5th, 2010