Unsure when traders on the U.S.-based COMEX and bullion banks at London's LBMA will run out of money trying to keep the price of gold and silver down, but, between keeping stocks floating at nose-bleed levels and shorting precious metals, the price tag for some large banking interests is surely in the tens of billions of dollars and possibly orders of magnitude higher. This is what happens when counterfeit is used as currency as opposed to real money, which is gold and silver. Unscrupulous dealers find nefarious means by which to steal the wealth of others, such as intentional inflation, devaluation of the currency, purposeful naked shorting of other currencies, and plenty of other insider tricks.
Americans don't seem to care much that they're being systematically made poorer by a variety of methods. As long as the 401k keeps going up, they're fat and happy. The incredible gains in gold and silver over the past two years don't register with them, quite the opposite from much of the rest of the world, especially in China, India, Russia, and the Middle East, where the value of precious metals is well understood and engrained into the culture.
When a Chairman of the Federal Reserve - Ben Bernanke - was asked whether or not he thought gold was money by Ron Paul, then a House representative from Texas, his answer was "No." When Paul asked him why the Fed kept gold on its books, Bernanke's response was, "tradition." The clip from 2011 below is real, has not been altered and points up the vast differences in perspectives when it comes to economy and money between regular people (Ron Paul, for instance) and counterfeiters (Bernanke, et. al.).
Currency that can be produced by typing numbers into a computer, the so-called practice of creating "money out of thin air," is not money at all. It is counterfeit, but, so long as everybody accepts it as real, it operates as a medium of exchange. When it comes to being a store of value - one of the essential elements of money - fiat currencies, like the pound, yen, euro, and dollar fail miserably, the purchasing power refected as inflation. This is why gold and silver prices have been soaring. Nothing about an ouce of gold or silver has changed, only the price, in depreciating currencies, has.
As gold and silver will continue to soar in price against failing fiat currencies the world over, another factor has come into play. Arbitrage is rapidly developing between various gold and silver hubs and exchanges. Spot prices, which most people refer to when speaking of gold or silver prices, aren't actually global. As of this morning, December 24, the price of an ounce of silver at the Shangai Metals exchange is 78.55 Us$, while it is somewhere in the range of $71.67 on the COMEX in New York.
This sets up a unique arbitrage situation, though it is difficult to imagine buying silver in New York and then moving it to Shanghai to sell it at a higher price, but that is certainly being entertained, if not already happening in practice. While there have not been sightings of planeloads of silver leaving JFK for the Far East, rest assured that a persistent price differential will raise more than mere eyebrows. If silver is worth more in China, or Singapore, or Dubai, than it is in New York, guess where all the silver is going? Eventually, the physical price (Shanghai) will become preferred over the paper price (New York).
Americans don't understand what is happening because they are in a bubble of currency and stock market madness. The Shiller PE stands at 40.59, second-highest ever. The media does not report on news that might make people think the U.S. is not the mightiest nation on the planet and that Russia, China, India and elsewhere are mere backwaters. The opposite is becoming more the norm every day.
A few words about yesterday's 3rd quarter GDP figure of 4.3%. First, GDP is a horrible representation of the wealth of a nation. In the U.S., as in other developed nations, it takes into account government spending, which produces nothing. Second, the BEA makes up most of the numbers, just like the BLS and their CPI and employment numbers. Everything is massaged and seasonally adjusted and later, quietly, so as not to upset the natives, revised.
Third quarter GDP was largely the result of consumer spending we have been led to believe. If spending more on insurance and health care is the sign of an improving economy, then the third quarter was awesome, because that where the largest increases were seen, supposedly. The report was late, the methodology flawed, and, besides, a strong economy goes against the grain of the current narrative that the economy is weak and needs rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.
Both of those things cannot be true at the same time, but, as usual, Wall Street whistled past the grave, calling the dated findings, "stale" and expect the 4th quarter to be horrible, with GDP up less than one percent.
Chew on that while you're unwrapping your Christmas trinkets.
Short session today, closing at 1:00 pm ET.
Trade hard, Merry Christmas!
At the Close, Tuesday, December 23, 2025:
Dow: 48,442.41, +79.73 (+0.16%)
NASDAQ: 23,561.84, +133.01 (+0.57%)
S&P 500: 6,909.79, +31.30 (+0.46%)
NYSE Composite: 22,151.72, +40.41 (+0.18%)
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