The US dollar is dying. Long live gold and silver!
This is how ‘we’ got there, and where we likely are going.
Gold has stabilised temporarily between USD4,200/oz and USD 4,500/oz but silver is totally out of control. Its value is split between its role as a monetary token (where it is a “Giffen Good” (something which becomes more desirable, the higher the price) and an essential strategic asset for modern civilisation, where it has a low price/demand elasticity. Demand is outstripping silver supply and supplies are showing the effect of centuries of depletion of this finite natural mineral resource! (Eventually regulation and price controls could be brought into play with silver if market dynamics fail?)
(One example of humanity’s problem: One ounce of silver in each solar panel means that where silver costs anywhere from USD5.00/oz up to USD50/ounce the customer must pay but at what price point do we lose the option of using that metal for that product and for a myriad of others which have a myriad of different price elasticities? We may be about to find out. So please read on)
Fiat currencies will soon be toast!!! On 26 November 2025 the price of silver was USD56.41/oz. Today, 13 days later, it is USD63.86/oz and therefore up by 13.2%, so the huge bullion banks that were carrying out Government policy to depress market prices on Comex and LBMA are clearly losing their control, despite efforts to drop the futures prices. Those banks which are still carrying naked shorts will be left with huge losses if this continues. Where could this rate of price increase go to in a few months? Does it go parabolic from here? I am now sure it does, but to what height?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFvKAYVSjaU
The silver shortages suggest that in the medium term (1-2 years) and with an excess of demand over mine output, we could one day see the silver price match the in-ground ratio between gold and silver of 1:7 against the gold price. In other words, at the current gold price of approx. USD4,200/oz, silver could easily rise to USD690/oz subject to demand. Silver investors should be careful what they wish for because the corollary is economic chaos – particularly if gold is revalued upwards at any point by a significant amount. (You may be unaware but in the revised US Fed rules, as from May this year, it is stated that the Fed’s Directors can revalue gold up to a ceiling of USD24,000/oz at their discretion – but presumably only when instructed to do so by US Treasury Secretary Bessant). Some leading analysts predict price moves for silver to over USD1,000/oz…(but ask yourself whether anyone can use silver in solar panels at that price?)
The G7 countries are already fighting for their economic viability where their government debt exceeds their annual GDP – but with no chance of avoiding a severe crash as debts continue to climb, faster than GDP. In many OECD countries, the economic multiplier principle is now dead or works in reverse. The party is over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLY2IN8sXR0
How could the monetisation of gold and silver as money have happened? From 1971, gold used to be regarded as a “barbarous relic” of no economic value.
Just cast your mind back to a few years ago when the Bank of International Settlements issued the pronouncement that from 1st July 2025, gold would become a tier 1 reserve asset. As all reputable economists will tell you, “Good money always drives out the bad.” The “bad money” in this case are the other two remaining tier 1 reserve assets (1. the US dollar that is still being printed at will – effectively to debase it, and 2. the US Treasury bills that the US Government cannot even repay the interest on), so that the USA must roll them over and issue fresh debt at up to an extra USD2 to 3 trillion every year. In 2025 the prices of gold and silver are moving skywards. Now the world’s central banks are buying about 1,000 tonnes plus of gold each year as they alter reserve structures. Today, gold has already replaced US Treasury debt as the principal tier 1 reserve asset. I can now confidently predict 2026 will be the time when both BRICS countries and US allies accelerate the withdrawal from almost total acceptance and use of the US dollar unless its debasement can be stopped.
To give you an indication of how serious this situation is for the European countries and UK, there is reputed to be about USD44 trillion in assets and equities floating around under their control that are denominated in US dollars. This situation may be worse for the USA as the US Treasury is in a fight (to the death) to protect the credibility of the US dollar.
2026 could easily be a year of chaos. Whether this is about wars or economic chaos or both, so we have very little time to prepare. Those with money will already be converting it into gold, silver, farmland, energy, utilities and rare minerals, because the only thing certain is that gold and silver price movements to date only represent a small part of the multi-decadal drop in the purchasing power of fiat money. The intelligent rich will prosper, the rest of us will be stuck (like deer in the headlights) watching the avalanche approach and the value of any money we hold in banks will fall as our purchasing power takes a hit. Today, the US dollar is just “the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry”. By the end of June 2026, the USA must have taken steps to shore up the credibility of the US dollar, or it could be “game over”.
I am certain that we have not for the last 100 years seen a collapse of the magnitude of the one that is coming. But there are plenty of analogues for what is likely to happen…starting with the collapse of ancient Rome to Alaric and his Visigoths in 410AD, and more recently to what happened to Germany’s Weimar Republic in 1921-24, the ensuing 1929 share market crash, Great Depression of the 1930’s and the tragedy of World War 2.
The more the “can is kicked down the road” the worse the mess to tidy up will be. All that had occurred in the GFC of 2007-13 was that the dirt was swept under the carpet and the complicit banksters were rewarded for their gross malfeasance! Now the day of reckoning has arrived, just as the BRICS dethrone the USA as global hegemon and introduce their own solutions for a gold-referenced (not gold-backed!) monetary system.
In 2026 the BRICS monetary system will have some credibility, the OECD system may not.
As of today, the G7 countries are in serious financial trouble and yet there is no possibility of their leaders developing the political will to address those problems. The structural problems will worsen, and in all likelihood the public will revolt as the elites impoverish them with the full brunt and burden of the collapse their actions have caused. Several decades of greed about to take a fall. Though the mainstream media is silent on the subject, the people of USA, Britain and France are arguably in revolt already.
As of today, the looming crash cycle is already very predictable. In 2007 when I first wrote about this coming crash there were only three or four areas of fragility in the global economy. Today there are dozens. In 2007 there were only two or three major systemic (government sanctioned) frauds, today – in the USA alone there are several and I don’t know where to start. Every fraud is now a multi-trillion-dollar crisis, such that none is individually fixable without causing a problem elsewhere. Several frauds are the direct result of deliberate government malfeasance. Yet still, there is no official or media tolerance for the truth.
The BRICS are launching their own processes by which sales can be made and paid for in the national currencies of the parties to each transaction. There is the fallback position of being able to use a currency of one of the major players. For example, the Chinese Yuan, Russian Rouble, or Indian Rupee – with clearance between currencies available in gold. So far, we have only seen announcements of the Yuan rollout. Now with thanks to Tom, there is the Russian perspective…
https://watcher.guru/news/brics-gold-pact-hits-33-countries-with-russia-leading-metal-exchange-push
Already the BRICS’ pilot gold-backed crypto currency is in the works:
https://www.intellinews.com/brics-launch-gold-backed-cryptocurrency-to-replace-the-dollar-415469/
What can US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant do? There seems only one possible gambit left. The USA is planning to provide balance sheet respite and liquidity by revaluing the USA’s gold holdings in July 2026. (Perhaps the US has 8,133 tons, but who knows whether they will confiscate private holdings [as FDR did in 1933], or what their true holding is?)
Depending on the extent of revaluation that will set the amount of an instant US dollar debasement. But given that the USA still has a huge volume of Treasury bills falling due for repayment over the next six months, or for recycling in a reluctant international market, but by merely announcing action to revalue gold, that revelation on its own could damage or destroy the US Treasury bond market’s marketability…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qo56qRa7ko
We must remember that reducing the value of the US dollar by such an inflationary move could be viewed by some as almost an event of default. Regardless, all Treasury bondholder’s security will have a significantly lower market value. Either way the USA would face a credit downgrade from the ratings agencies. All fresh borrowing would require the payment of higher interest rates by a government that is already in extremis.
The G7 still doesn’t get the true size of its predicament. The core structural weaknesses are unlikely to be addressed, and civil strife will ensue if that is the case. Already UK, France and USA governments (among others) hope to just soldier on, kicking the can down the road. This cannot end well.
The USA and NATO may have nuclear weapons and may throw their weight around. However now both China and Russia and their allies have the superior economic and military power. More importantly, the BRICS run realistic budgets and despite obvious problems, their higher growth rates ensure that their economies are not under the same debt burdens as the economies of the West. For many BRICS the economic multiplier principle still works.
I have to admit the obvious. Our own allies seem like a pack of losers. They may in future be more likely to prey on us than to be a source of economic or political support. That is a huge geopolitical consideration.
New Zealand and Australia must be more attuned to the political and economic realities than our governments are today. Neutrality, anyone?
Where is our gold, or more importantly, silver? But that is just one of our problems. New Zealand is the one country in the world which can see proof daily (from our own official published weather data) that human carbon emissions cannot possibly influence climate change, yet we ignore the proof and go along with the herd mania to trash our own economy. Reality begins at home, yet we are starting to revolve around our own South Pacific economic plug hole. Remember the golden rule, “He who has the gold makes the rules”. That guy’s name is likely either Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Lula da Silva or Cyril Ramaposa – depending on where BRICS influence is greatest. Fortunately, New Zealand has a big brother next door – and I do not mean the USA.
The EU has tragic proof of Dr Henry Kissinger’s view that, “To be an enemy of the USA is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”. The USA dragged the EU into the Ukraine conflict that was designed to weaken Russia and steal its resources, then when defeat stared them in the face, pivot to negotiate on its own for crumbs with Russia, and now the USA leaves the EU and UK to pick up the pieces of a lost cause, after the NATO partners are militarily debilitated, heavily indebted and have lost their economic viability. As with this example from beleaguered UK, official desperation begets stupid policies that can bring any country closer to civil war…Moving deckchairs on the “Titanic” never worked in 1913, so why would it work for OECD countries today…
Watch what is happening in London as the Government tries to bleed the farmers, the food suppliers: