patrick.net

ForcedTQ says

Executive order, applicable to the executive branch of the federal government…… The poor people who couldn’t think critically had the wool pulled over their eyes…

"Critical thinking" is not the issue. True, it was mere executive order, but the government would have locked you up anyway. A modern day example is those who got the clot shot rather than lose their jobs. Does not matter that nobody really had that authority to force the jab, as folks faced real dismissal if they did not comply.

HeadSet says

ForcedTQ says

Executive order, applicable to the executive branch of the federal government…… The poor people who couldn’t think critically had the wool pulled over their eyes…

"Critical thinking" is not the issue. True, it was mere executive order, but the government would have locked you up anyway. A modern day example is those who got the clot shot rather than lose their jobs. Does not matter that nobody really had that authority to force the jab, as folks faced real dismissal if they did not comply.

This is the real crime. It must be punished.

FortWayneHatesRealtors says

Gold skyrocketing because bad things are happening. World doesn’t think we can fix our debt problem.

Heard this a lot when I my last year in high school 1979-1980.

In 2006-2007 my engineer office mates and I began following the Gold Price and trying to figure out what should be the right price.

In my model, I priced it not in fiat money nor in any tradeable commodity, but instead in hours of the median US wage. In November 2007, when we ended our modeling, it was about 46 median worker hours per ounce of gold.

I reckoned that the purchasing power of US wages was already in a secular decline of about 1.3% per year since the US went off the gold standard. That conclusion was from a study of household vs individual wages covering the period 1967 - 2007, all data publicly available from US government websites.

The hard drive on my computer got wiped around the time I ended the analysis. I've been too lazy and stupid to reconstruct it. But I did reconstruct my 2007 figure of merit, 46 hours of labor.

Assuming the 1.3% decline per year since November 2027, that ounce would cost a median American about 59 hours of labor now, or about $1700 - $1800 for an "asset" that is not liquid, pays no income, and for many, has a storage cost. Today it closed at around $4940, or 166 hours of labor.

The peak price during my senior year of high school on January 21, 1980 was $850 per ounce.or 142 hours of median labor.

Certainly, gold was in a bubble at $850 in January 1980. Is it in a bubble at $4940 in January 2026? Time will tell.

B.A.C.A.H. says

Time will tell.

Silver $93...$94...$96...$99...$98

The new hundred dollar coin from the mint.

B.A.C.A.H. says

Certainly, gold was in a bubble at $850 in January 1980. Is it in a bubble at $4940 in January 2026? Time will tell.

If Trump ends his Presidency with the Ayatollahs out, some Reindustrialization in, etc. the dollar will get nice n' stronk

After usa seized russian assets, many countries started holding gold instead of us bonds etc.

If us can just seize $ then there is no point in holding dollar n us bonds. World is soaring to lose faith in $.

Yes, it was a disaster when Biden seized Russian assets.

Trust lost is hard to regain. Now every country realizes that it is very dangerous to hold any assets that are under US control.

That's why Trump is trying to do all this silly Peace Board stuff and having envoys with Putin. Goal is to break up BRICS, they are the system not under our control. We can't sanction away when they can trade with each other. Can't globohomo if there is no leverage.

Patrick says

Yes, it was a disaster when Biden seized Russian assets.

Trust lost is hard to regain. Now every country realizes that it is very dangerous to hold any assets that are under US control.

Most of the funds are stuck in EU banks where the EU has jurisdiction. That's why the EU were the ones trying to use the frozen Russian funds as collateral for a loan to the Ukraine. The funds are simply denominated in US dollars.

You're right:

Most frozen Russian funds are under EU jurisdiction, not U.S. jurisdiction.

The European Union holds approximately €210 billion ($245 billion) of the frozen Russian assets, making it the largest single holder.

The United States holds only about $5 billion in frozen Russian assets, a small fraction of the total.

When gold hit $900 back in 1979, it was tracking the real inflation in the economy; nowdays the inflation numbers are essentially made up. In most things I think we've seen > 200% inflation over the last 20 years (housing, education, food, medical - anything you really need, not bullshit electronics).

After Volker took the US economy out to the woodshed in the early 1980's and shot it twice dead with >15% interest rates, gold dropped back to around $400 and stayed that way until the late 1990's, when the US nominally ran a surplus (mostly by legerdemain by "unifying" the budget - before then, the SS trust fund was kept separate from the Federal budget).

If the past is a guide, then wherever gold ends up, we might expect a 50% retracement to a lower, but stable value. This will only occur if a major deflationary event occurs, such as turning off the spigot of $trillions in deficit spending every year.

Silver at $99 today. What is driving the 220% increase in silver prices over the last 12 months ?

Chicoms are hoarding and stockpiling since solar panels and Tomahawk cruise missiles use a lot of silver ?

Commodities are very volatile.

Just look at natural gas prices over the last week. We saw an increase of 60-75% in ONE WEEK.

You can make a lot of money at market peaks, but watch that fucking timing.

stereotomy says

After Volker took the US economy out to the woodshed in the early 1980's

There is no rampant inflation, like the trade, auto and teamster unions causing massive wage inflation, and no OPEC embargo.

Eggs, gasoline, townhome rental prices, etc are all notably down in Panama City Beach.

As of January 23, 2026, the current Truflation US CPI inflation rate is 1.21%.

The Federal Reserve should just keep the Fed Funds rate around 3.75%.

And the Federal Reserve is buying about $50 billion a month in US Treasuries now since QT is over and it has not restarted QE; the purchases are replacing matured Treasuries to keep the balance sheet around $6 trillion.

stereotomy says

When gold hit $900 back in 1979,

Didn't hit $900. See below.

B.A.C.A.H. says

The peak price during my senior year of high school on January 21, 1980 was $850 per ounce.or 142 hours of median labor.

What I left off the earlier post was this calculation. Assuming the 1.3% decline in purchasing power of American wages since 1967, what costed 142 hours of median labor in January of 1980 would be expected to cost about 260 hours of median labor in January 2026. This would correspond to a gold price of about $7000 per ounce to match the January 1980 mania.

We'll find out

I wonder if Iwog "backed up the truck" when silver was less than $20 per ounce.

At a silver spot price of $100 per troy ounce, the melt value of one silver dollar is 0.7734 × $100 = $77.34

That dollar coin used to be one dollar.

Goddamn, gold broke $5K:

They're not reducing the amount of dollar reserves. Those are at an all-time high and are increasing.

What's happened is that the price of gold has more than doubled.

Brave AI:

Central banks worldwide are actively reducing U.S. dollar reserves and increasing gold holdings, marking a significant shift in global monetary policy. This trend, known as de-dollarization, has accelerated since 2022, particularly following Western sanctions on Russia that froze its foreign exchange reserves. In response, countries like China, Russia, India, Turkey, and several Middle Eastern nations have diversified their reserves by purchasing record amounts of gold—over 1,000 tonnes annually in recent years.

Gold's share in global foreign exchange reserves has risen from 13% in 2017 to nearly 20% by 2024, and it has now overtaken U.S. bonds as the largest foreign reserve asset, according to the World Gold Council. This shift reflects a strategic move to reduce exposure to U.S. financial sanctions and geopolitical risk. Gold is seen as a neutral, physically held asset that cannot be frozen or seized, unlike dollar-denominated assets held in Western institutions.

A result of Biden's mega fuck-up in freezing Russian assets.

Patrick says

that cannot be frozen or seized

Didn't quite work out that way for Stalin. The first harvest season after the commies took over in the Soviet Union was an epic bust. Stalin tried to purchase grain from the UK with Russian gold, but was told they wouldn't accept Soviet gold. Mass starvation occurred in the Soviet Union. Plenty of bad blood to this day. One of the reasons Putin says that if there is a nuclear war London is the first to go.

Patrick says

At a silver spot price of $100 per troy ounce, the melt value of one silver dollar is 0.7734 × $100 = $77.34

That dollar coin used to be one dollar.

To put that in perspective, there was a time then when 6,465 oz of silver denomination in dollars would buy the equivalent of the average $500,000 house today(and still would if physical silver)….. Pretty wild stuff, this inflation / currency devaluation is….

I think in some way Bitcoin and crypto competed with silver and gold, and explains partially why silver prices were depressed since 2012 to 2024.

Now a lot of wealth managers are recommending 3 to 5% of assets being in Bitcoin like Blackrock Bitcoin ETF.

I look at silver price manipulation being like a finger pressing down on a spring. The less manipulation means the less force of the finger against the spring.

The estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for silver from its 1980 price peak to today's price is approximately 5.45% (from $49.45 per ounce on January 18, 1980, to approximately $111.71 per ounce on January 27, 2026).

The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for inflation in the US from 1980 to early 2026 is approximately 3.02% to 3.03%.

Silver real or inflation-adjusted CAGR

Chinese Silver Fund Halts Trading as Frenzy Drives Up Premium

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-silver-fund-halts-trading-021541976.html

I know silver has been manipulated in the past but what about gold? At the rate its moving it just hit 5k and now is moving to 6k its accelerating.

RC2006 says

I know silver has been manipulated in the past but what about gold? At the rate its moving it just hit 5k and now is moving to 6k its accelerating.

If gold is being manipulated up, I suspect Ft Knox is packed to the gills with gold bars.

From what I've picked up from here and there over the last several months, the Fed and the commodities dealers have been trying to manage the price of gold by having the Fed lease gold from Ft. Knox to dealers so that they can sell gold futures at low prices to keep gold down. Now all the gold has been leased out, and furthermore, the lessees won't give back the gold they've leased (technically, they're rolling over their contracts).

So Powell is correct when he says the gold is accounted for. What he isn't saying is that it's all leased out, and no one wants to give it back, so I guess they'll hold it on the books as "present."

This could be pure woo, but something has changed in the past 2 years. The big question is "why?"