Is the world running short of gold?

In his essays On The Principles Of Population, the English scholar Thomas Malthus argued that the earth's resources are limited and cannot support unlimited population growth. "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man", he said. In many ways ‘peak oil’ theory is an extension of this notion. There is a finite amount of oil in the world, runs the theory (one estimate puts that number at 75 trillion barrels). At a certain stage, the point of maximum production will be reached. Thereafter production levels will decline. The US reached its peak in 1970; the rest of world, it seems, in May 2005 at 74 million barrels per day - though this is subject to a lot of debate. But what about 'peak gold'? Does the Malthusian argument extend to gold?