It is tempting to describe gold and silver as outside the system, but that is not quite right. They are part of human civilisation precisely because they record its behaviour. Gold measures trust in institutions. Silver measures the material intensity of progress.
It’s not just the US, China, and Japan that have debt issues. It’s a large portion of the developing countries, and especially Europe. When we do have a sovereign debt crisis, it is not going to be isolated to just one or two countries.
Despite their well-earned reputations as stable assets and safe havens, gold and silver have become highly volatile in recent weeks, with sharp moves in both directions.
Gold is recovering after one of its hardest drops in years. At the time of writing, prices are up $62 to about $4,126/oz, while silver has climbed $1.25 to $48.93/oz.
In essence, banks are getting back to not wanting to lend to each other as the lowering tide starts to reveal a few zombie banks that were swimming without their shorts on.
