There's less and less liquidity in the [music] banking system. There's less and less trust among the banks. There's less and less oil in the engine. That engine is so critical to the [music] US banking system which is so critical to the global banking system which is so critical to US treasury purchases and so critical to derivatives trades which [music] are collateralized by US treasuries like the repo markets. This is not a good sign in an already world full of bad signs. From Main Street to Wall Street, >> you're watching Silver News Daily. Subscribe for more. >> The banking system is breaking right now and most people have no clue what's actually happening. Behind closed doors, emergency meetings are taking place at the New York Fed. Repo rates are spiking violently and the financial oil that keeps the banking engine running has nearly run dry. Liquidity, the lifeblood of global finance, is vanishing in real time. And the signals couldn't be louder. The Fed has quietly expanded its standing repo facility. Reverse repo usage has collapsed to levels we haven't seen since 2020. And the SOFR spread just exploded to crisis territory. These are not minor tweaks. They are the final gasps of a system on life support. And when that final gasp comes, the only option left will be a money printer event so extreme, so reckless, it will make 2020 look tame. This isn't just about another round of quantitative easing. This will be the moment the Fed unleashes the full bazooka money to prevent a total collapse. And when that happens, silver isn't just going to rise. It's going to detonate past $50, past $100, even past $1,000. Because in a world where trust in the banking system evaporates overnight, silver becomes not just an asset, it becomes survival. another one of those it's another one of those little areas of the market which many in your audience understandably uh don't follow. It's the the spread between the repo market and the Fed funds rate. Again, that sounds really wonky and I I want to make it simpler uh because it's meant to be complex. It's meant to be overlooked and it's really meant to be misunderstood but in simplest terms it has a huge impact on on liquidity in the markets. It has a huge impact on central bank solutions and more liquidity to come which means it has a it has a huge impact on the direction of gold and silver going forward. But again, and not to get too complex, the repo markets are places where basically commercial banks go to borrow from each other and overnight loans and they post collateral for that overnight loan and then the next day they pay back that loan at a rate called the repo rate which is a little bit higher uh for the overnight lending for the overnight borrowing. So the banks help each other out with liquidity can be large or small amounts. It's an overnight uh liquidity form and it's very important to keeping the grease of the engine that is the commercial banking system uh running smoothly and 99% of the time it runs very smoothly. Like 99% of the time hopefully a new car runs smoothly. But if you don't keep oil in that engine, no matter how good the car is, it will start to smoke and and chuckle and and and choke and eventually if you don't put oil in at all, it'll blow up the engine. And if you think of the repo markets in the in the commercial banking system, that that overnight loan, that overnight liquidity helps them keep the wheels of their lending and their operations grease. So those repo markets are important. And the rate for borrowing overnight is important. When that rate starts to spike, that means there's a there's a low oil warning light. As I said in the art, there's a low or low oil warning light in the engine. So, you need to put more oil in quickly. If you wait too long, it it really blows up the engine. And what we've seen recently is that the the sulfur rate or the rate, the overnight repo rate has started to go the spread between that and the Fed's fund rate is is getting higher. That means that there's a liquidity problem. The Fed is mandated to make sure that liquidity is there. It also means that these banks among the big too big to fail banks are not trusting each other's collateral in the way they usually do 90% of the time or 99% of the time. Of course, the biggest implosion in the repo markets was in September of 2019 when the rates went up to 10% in a day. That was a major shock to the system. It cost hundreds of billions in immediate liquidity. And recently a bunch of these uh primary dealers, these big banks met at the New York Fed because there's a problem in the repo market. They're concerned that the rates have risen, these repo rates have risen despite the fact that the Fed had just put in 125 billion prior to this. Again, without getting into the repo markets and then the emergency liquidity from the reverse repo markets, it's very simply saying that there's less and less liquidity in the banking system. There's less and less trust among the banks. There's less and less oil in the air. >> The warning signs are no longer subtle. They're screaming from the core of the financial system. In just the last few weeks, the spread between Sofur and the Fed's interest on reserves has widened from a stable three basis points to a shocking 18, a signal that trust between banks is cracking. Overnight reverse repo balances, once a safe haven for trillions in excess liquidity, have plunged to under $200 billion, the lowest level since the co crash. And what's replacing it? Emergency borrowing from the Fed's own standing repo facility. That's not normal. It's a red flag that liquidity is evaporating and that major players are running out of options. Now, think about this. When repo markets seize up, it's not a glitch. It's the fuse on the bomb. It happened in 2008. It happened again in 2019. And now in 2025, it's happening on a scale the system isn't prepared for. Primary dealers have already been summoned for crisis talks. The Feds quietly raised counterparty limits behind the scenes. These aren't moves you make in a healthy system. These are desperate precrisis patches to stop the bleeding. And yet, the public is still asleep watching inflation stats while the real storm brews in the plumbing of global finance. Because when the pipes burst, markets don't get a warning. They implode. And the only question left is what comes next when liquidity truly vanishes. >> Decades they've been told by their private wealth managers or their online advisors or their, you know, the RAIA industrial complex that gold was just some pawn shop asset or precious metals were pass analog pet rocks. Despite the fact that gold has outperformed in total return the S&P for a quarter of a century. Now that once intentionally misunderstood and ignored asset is making the headlines, retail investors are starting to catch on that there's more to life than tech stocks or the S&P. And they're starting to start to ask why gold is rising. And if they take the time to really look without you have to go into thousands of history books, but if they take the time to get an objective opinion on what is currency debasement in the backdrop of a debt setting like this, it really isn't that hard to see. It doesn't mean that you can't look at Bitcoin or cryptos as other anti- fiat solutions. That's another rabbit hole. I'm here to talk about precious milk because that's what I've chosen. That's my bias. That's our conviction. We definitely want to hold this asset as we've warned for decades, as Egon has seen for decades, outside of the banking system, which has many risks, and to hold it privately, the best gold you can get outside of that system, and to store your wealth in that and to save like central banks in the East are now doing, to save in a precious metal, which holds its value, and then spend in fiat as you need it. That explains why central banks now hold more gold than they do US treasuries. that sacred cow, that tier one asset of decades past has now been replaced slowly but surely by physical gold. And we can look at the comx flows and we can look at some of the wonky math and we can look at the repo markets and the banking risks, but this isn't even a gold bug argument anymore, Elijah. This is known everywhere. And and I think it's sad that retail investors are still catching on. They're still less than 1% of their allocations to gold. they're still highly in the 6040 or some version of the 8020 stock bond portfolio and they're trying to figure this out and in and platforms like yours and opinions like mine uh are certainly worth looking at. They they don't have to take it at face value on the first on the first watch so to speak, but I think most of your clients certainly our listeners they've heard this before. They know this. They have the conviction. So again, the price moves month to month, week to week, day to day aren't really their main concern. And I'm I'm not exaggerating. Uh my partners and I and Egon, we don't really talk about the daily gold and silver price. We we haven't talked about it for years because we just know with confidence that it will continue to move in a direction again, never in a straight line only because the situation in the global system, the global debt levels is so empirically obvious now. And that whatever reset to come, whatever revaluation to come, whatever political mechanizations to come from stable coin to Doge to USA, whatever happens, we do know this east and west, bricks and the IMF, west and east are looking more as more of gold, looking more at gold in particular as really the new reserve strategic asset. That is a geopolitical historical move. It is not a market move with a chart that you just need Ballinger bands to follow to buy and sell. >> The repo market isn't just a footnote in financial news. It's the beating heart of the global banking system. It's where trillions of dollars move daily to keep banks functioning, corporations operating, and markets stable. But right now, that heart is skipping beats. And every skipped beat brings us closer to cardiac arrest. Here's why it matters. When banks no longer trust each other enough to lend overnight, even with collateral, it means the system itself is on the verge of seizing up. That's what a repo crisis is. It's not just a liquidity issue. It's a trust collapse. And without trust, credit freezes, trade halts, markets lock, and this is exactly what we're starting to see. The spike in repo rates isn't just technical. It's the signal that institutions are pulling back, hoarding cash, and refusing to play the game. This happened in 2008 when Lehman fell. It happened again in 2019 when the Fed had to inject emergency cash just to stop a meltdown. And it's happening now. Only this time, the scale is even bigger. Why? Because the stakes are higher. The derivative exposure is larger. The debt is deeper. And unlike in 2019, there's no room to raise rates and no credibility left to contain the panic quietly. When the repo market breaks, it tells you everything you need to know. The engine of finance is choking. And in that moment, the Fed's choice becomes binary. Let the system implode or flood it with liquidity so massive it destroys the value of the very dollars it prints. Either way, the message is the same. Silver is no longer just an investment. It's a lifeboat. Just before we get going, we just launched the official Silver News Daily Telegram. To kick things off, we're running a 10oz silver giveaway. Yes, real physical silver, not a voucher, not digital credits, actual bullion. This Telegram will be our new home for real-time silver discussions, market insights, collection picks, and everything precious metals. It's where the community truly comes alive. Here's how to enter the 10oz silver giveaway. Be subscribed to Silver News Daily on YouTube. Turn on the notification bell, comment 10O giveaway on three separate videos. Be an active member of the Telegram group, and say hi. Once we hit 500 active Telegram members, we'll pick one lucky winner to receive 10 ounces of silver shipped directly to you. So get in early, stay active. Inherent purchasing power over time as it has done again from ancient Rome to Philip II and Portugal in the 1500s to the British Empire, the Dutch Empire, the US Empire. Again, doesn't mean the end of all of these empires emphatically. Rome is still there. DC is still there. London is still there. But the purchasing power of those currencies and of those hedgeimonies inevitably debases itself because of the addiction to easy money and the addiction to debt to stay in power. Whatever power that is, whether it's democracy or not, you need to spend. When you no longer have a chaperon to that money or that currency, whether it's a dinarius or a dollar, you whittle away at the precious metal aspect. you you decouple it from the gold standard which is literally an article one of our constitution and then you can go into greater debt and that you can debase your currency. So again, simplistic historical lesson, but if you understand precious metals as a store of value, not an Nvidia stock, not anthropic, um not an a tech trade, not Tesla, whatever other asset that has made you rich or poor in the last 20 years to pay on your entries and exits. If you understand gold and silver as a better store of value to preserve your wealth against debased paper money, if gold goes down 10% in a two-e period in these recent all-time highs, that doesn't bother you at all. Because if you understand the problem, you have the conviction that this store of value, this silver or this gold that I own is only going to go up further in a secular manner, not a straight line. It's only going to go up further in a secular manner because there is no immediate solution to the problem of debt. Again, we've talked about debt in 80 different ways, but it's nothing new. Throughout history, sometimes history again is harder to see when you're in it. But no, these, as always with me, it's a long answer to a short question, but no, it is not a surprise to see gold going back up again. It will not be a surprise when it passes 4,800 or 5,000 or 6,000 only because this is not a bull market in precious metals. It is a bare market in paper money. You either believe that or you don't. You either accept that or you don't. We can spend a lot of time and we have spent a lot of hours over the years talking about this. That's a personal choice. You should take your own informed judgment on that. But I think the evidence, which we can get into too, is fairly obvious that the world is catching on after decades of overextending debt levels to such a degree. It could be done for a while, but it's gone to that tipping point. It's like boiling water. It gets very hot for many, many minutes, and at some point it starts to boil. What we've seen since November of 24 and all of 25 is that boiling point is been reached. The water is now boiling. The awareness of the weakness of paper money in general and the world reserve currency in particular is now obvious from the petro dollar to dd dollararization to the bis to Morgan Stanley. The world is seeing this now and and and I think and retail investors sadly are the last to figure this out because for this is the moment the Fed runs out of tools and starts reaching for the nuclear option. Bazooka money. We're not talking about another mild rate cut or a soft QE program. This is the endgame scenario where the only response to a total breakdown in the banking system is the most aggressive liquidity injection in monetary history. Because once trust vanishes and repo markets freeze, the Fed can't sit back and let contagion take hold. It has to act instantly and with overwhelming force. That means unlimited repo operations. That means suspended balance sheet runoff. And eventually it means full-blown unrestricted money printing. Not to stimulate, not to stabilize, but to prevent outright collapse. And here's the dangerous truth. This time, there's no buffer. The Fed can't cut rates from 5% without causing a yield curve implosion. It can't absorb trillions in Treasury issuance without triggering inflation panic. And it certainly can't suppress a banking crisis while maintaining any semblance of credibility. So instead, they'll flood the system just like they did in 2020, but more, just like they did in 2008, but faster. Because now the entire structure depends on infinite liquidity just to stay upright. This is when fiat currencies start to lose their grip. This is when hard assets go vertical. And this is when silver, ignored, suppressed, and underestimated, finally reclaims its historic role as the hedge of last resort. Not because of hype, but because the system itself forces it. When the Fed fires the bazooka, silver won't just rise, it will explode. >> Again, we've been talking about gold for years, and certainly in the last few months, when you see all-time highs, you know, how many we've had this year, over 45. And then if there's a little bit of a pullback in the precious metals prices, silver or gold, uh there's a a [clears throat] big concern. Have we reached peak gold in 2025? And then when gold gets back up again, those headlines dissipate. And I understand that um you know, headline concern. I think for most of your viewers at this point who have a high conviction in precious metals, um price movements in a bull market like this didn't dissuade them from their longerterm play and longerterm view on why you need to own precious metals. And I want to answer the question fairly without just again as always suggesting just my conviction or bias. I've said many times this is not an ordinary bull market. This is not an ordinary asset. This is a monetary metal, a precious metal. It's not even an ordinary commodity. It's not even an ordinary metal. And if you understand the context and why you originally bought gold and silver, which I hope was not just for immediate price appreciation to get rich, but because you understood and understand a systemic problem in the financial and the monetary system, not only in the US, but globally. And we'll talk about that and I certainly would like to talk about silver too more because for a lot of investors that's more affordable way to understand this. But you know when Egon Vanreer started our company decades ago it was with a long-term vision of many things including banking risk and political risk and currency risk. But you know there was a reason he was buying gold at those levels and there was a reason he was holding it outside of the banking system. And there was a reason he would rather save in gold and silver than in dollars or euros or franks or at the time uh you know whatever it was even pre- euro. It was simply because of an understanding of history and math and markets that the banks were risky and we'll talk about banking risk that holding your precious metals and your store of value which is a better store of value than any paper currency outside of that banking system made sense in 1995 in 2003 and it makes sense in 2025. If you understand these core issues, whether you bought gold at 1,600 or 2,800 or whether you buy gold when it gets to 5,200, you'll still understand why you bought it. And I think the the the simple answer is if you un you can't know the solution if you don't know the problem. And decades ago, Egon and many others and myself later understood the problem. And the problem, of course, as we've discussed in so many iterations and we can bring out all the data. It's not just sensational is we have a massive unsustainable global debt crisis. It has been percolating pre and postco. It's been percolating pre and post 2008. When you have a debt crisis, wherever your zip code is, whatever your central bank is, whether it's the ECB, the Bank of England, whether it's the Fed, central banks from Australia to Man to uh to DC will monetize that unsustainable debt with money created literally ex nilo out of nowhere, expanding credit, expanding the money supply, and debasing the currency. That's a very simplistic understanding of the problem that currency will be debased over the long term. The inherent purchasing power of your paper currency, whatever currency that is. Certainly, the home of the world reserve currency is important. Um that whatever that currency is, it will lose its inherent. >> Now, here's where the scale of this crisis becomes truly terrifying. Derivatives. The financial system isn't just drowning in debt. It's perched on top of a derivatives market that's now estimated to be more than 10 times the size it was during the 2008 meltdown. We're talking about a multi-quadillion dollar monster that touches everything. Interest rates, currencies, commodities, even repo transactions. And in a world where liquidity is vanishing, those complex bets start to unravel fast. Every tick up in volatility sends shock waves through margin accounts. Every fluctuation in repo rates sets off cascading collateral calls. And as one position blows up, it pulls the next one down with it. This is how a simple liquidity crunch turns into a full-blown systemic collapse. The worst part, most of these positions aren't visible. They're buried in the off-balance sheet darkness of the world's biggest banks, hidden under the guise of hedging or risk management. But when confidence collapses and the dominoes start falling, no hedge is safe. We saw glimpses of this during the 2023 guilt crisis in the UK. Pension funds nearly collapsed over leveraged interest rate swaps. That was just a tremor. Now imagine that stress playing out on a global scale with exponentially larger exposure and no central bank ready to catch the fall. In this environment, assets that rely on counterparty trust, stocks, bonds, even bank deposits become ticking time bombs. But silver, silver doesn't need a counterparty. It doesn't default. It doesn't get margin called. And that's exactly why when the derivatives bomb detonates, the rush into physical silver will be unlike anything we've ever seen. Because when trust evaporates and leverage implodes, the only safe haven left is something real. Too big to fail. Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, they weren't the same type of depositor banks that Morgan Stanley or BFA or Cityroup is. And I think uh the fear that if they didn't bail out those banks, the ripple effects on Main Street would be too great. So the good news is they'd probably be bailed out. The bad news is that's really good for gold. It's very bad for the dollar because the cost of those bailouts is in the trillions. I mean the the great financial crisis which began because Jimmy Kaine and Bear Sterns had a $600 billion balance sheet of assets and liabilities. What he didn't say is he had 35 trillion in Uber levered uh derivatives on subprime mortgages. So that bank failed and that spread to other banks who were counterparties. That spread to AIG which is ensuring the CDS. In other words, it was a it was a domino effect and it costs the world about 27 trillion to bail out that crisis. And today the derivatives market is 10 times the size it was in 2008. We learn nothing from 2008. Even if five or 10% of those banks failed, the cost to bail them out would be more than '08 to bail them out would require bazooka money, which would be further debasement of the green back in your wallet or the dollar in your wallet. So that is an invisible theft. Even if the banks are bailed out, even if your checking and savings accounts were saved, which is no guaranteed, but I think they probably would be, but even if they were, the net result is be careful what you ask for. You get the bailout, but the inherent purchasing power of your ice cube dollar bill is continually melting because the only way to pay for that is with money the government doesn't otherwise have unless they manufacture that money out of nothing. And that is the definition of credit expansion. That is the definition of money supply expansion. That is the definition of inflation, the invisible tax, currency debasement, etc. They now call it the debasement rate. It's so obvious now. But yeah, banks could be at risk because of these signs from the repo market. They can be at risk because the derivatives market that took down the great banks of 2008 is 10 times what it was in 2008 today. And they learned nothing from that lesson. And DoddFrank did nothing to fix it. Yes, there's banking risk, but even if they are saved, there is no happy solution or happy ending because they're only saved by debasing the currency. If they're not saved, well, you know, will be it to you who have anything more than 250,000 in an FDIC insured bank because the rest technically is on you. In other words, good luck. And so, you know, in this climate with this level of debt, at the government level, at this level of debt and risk at the banking level, it's just one more thing for people to have to deal with and think about. The short answer is I don't think the major banks would fail. I think they'd be as a matter of national security bailed out. But I think the cost of that bailout would just be one more insult to the dollar, one of many insults to the dollar and one more tailwind for gold and silver. In every crisis, gold gets the headlines. But silver is the metal that shocks the world. And this time, it's not just a supporting act. It's the main event. Because while gold serves as the traditional hedge, it's already been revalued by central banks, hoarded by nations, and priced into financial models. Silver, on the other hand, is still dirt cheap, ignored, dismissed, and trading at a fraction of its historic relationship to gold. But history shows us one unshakable truth. When gold runs, silver explodes. Look at the ratio. At the start of 2025, gold was nearly 100 times more expensive than silver. Today that ratio has dropped to 79 and experts say it could fall to 50 or lower in this cycle. Every time this ratio compresses, silver doesn't just catch up, it overcompensates. In 1980, silver didn't climb. It launched from under $6 to nearly $50 in just months, outperforming gold by multiples. In 2011, it happened again. And now in 2025, we're watching the exact same pattern unfold, but this time with far more firepower behind it. Because here's the thing, gold is already being snapped up by central banks at record pace. Over 1,200 tons this year alone. But silver, silver is just beginning to attract institutional attention. And in a crisis where inflation, liquidity panic, and fiat distrust collide, silver has far more room to run. It's cheaper. It's more volatile. and it's still massively underowned. So, while gold stabilizes portfolios, silver will ignite them. And that ignition starts with the breakdown of the gold to silver ratio, the most reliable early warning signal of silver's coming supernova. >> Yeah, that's a really really important question. And I mean I I've written a lot we can talk about derivatives a whole other silo of extraordinary banking risk but to your point when liquidity is drying up when repo rates are spiking when banks are starting to smoke in the engine because the grease is drying and liquidity is drying that is reminiscent of Signature Valley Bank and these other smaller banks you could say still with massive balance sheets but those were three of the four largest banking fails in our history and that was just a couple of years ago. So the question you're saying is, is this a sign that these banks could fail? Now, the banks that use the overnight repo markets are your classic too big to fail banks. The JP Morgans, the BAS, the Goldman Sachs. By the way, when they borrow from each other, that's kind of a a stigma. They don't like to admit that they're borrowing from each other overnight. They don't even report that publicly. It takes two years. There's anonymous trading going on in the reverse repo in the repo markets. It's it's already a sign that the very fact that they're there means they're a little tight and they need a little cash. And then the fact that they're there and the rates are going high suggests there's some cracks in the armor in those banks. Now during the the the banking crisis they kept it out of in Signature Valley Bank etc. in 2023 was a major problem. Of course the reason they failed wasn't because they had no cash. The reason they failed is their balance sheets were full of US treasuries. And because Powell was raising rates, as rates went up, the bond prices, which were the collateral of those banks, went down. So the banking crisis of 23 was really a bond crisis, a credit crisis, a rate crisis. And your question is very apt. Now FTC insured certain accounts to 250,000. Of course, there was emergency liquidity. It cost a lot of money. There was a bailout of the depositors in those smaller banks. And your question is, could that happen again? Is this another symptom outside of the whole derivatives market, which is another major banking risk? And the short answer is for smaller banks, it could be because there's only so much the government can do to bail out failed banks. But again, as we saw in 2023, they'll do it because they don't want the contagion effect of depositors losing faith in the banking system, even with the smaller banks in particular. So they bailed them out. And of course, indirectly, the taxpayer ends up paying for that. and the dollar gets to base to pay for that because the mouseclick money used to save those systems isn't come tax receipts or GDP. So indirectly we're all paying for those failures but the depositors were saved. So the larger question is will banks always be bailed out? There's two ways to answer that. The smaller banks arguably could be allowed to fail as we saw from 2008. The bigger banks are literally too big to fail. They're a matter of national security. I remember when when Signature Valley Bank was failing or when they were having that crisis in 23, I got a lot of phone calls from wealthier people I knew in the US saying, "Matt, I'm at a West Coast bank. Should I just go to JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs cuz they're too big to fail?" Literally, that was the question. And without being a without having a crystal ball and cynically, I still think that almost anything is too big to fail. But smaller banks can be allowed to fail if you're in a smaller savings and loan bank. We've seen how those can be pinched in the past in the 80s. Could there arguably be a liquidity crisis? Nothing's impossible. Again, when we started uh von Greers 20, you know, three decades ago, our biggest, one of our biggest concerns was banking risk. Don't hold your gold in these banks. The flip side to that case is we saw in 2008. We've certainly seen in other areas where the government and the Fed and the policies seem to indicate that certain banks, certainly the banks using the reple markets are literally But here's the catch. The silver needed to fuel this explosion. It isn't there. We're staring down one of the largest structural deficits in the history of the silver market. Mine supply has flatlined around 820 million ounces a year, while industrial and investment demand has surged past 1.2 billion. That's a shortfall of nearly 200 million ounces annually. And it's not a one-off. This is the ghee fourth straight year of deficit, and the gap is only widening. Why? Because silver isn't just a monetary asset anymore. It's an industrial necessity. Solar panels alone now devour over 280 million ounces per year, nearly a quarter of total global demand. And there's no substitute. Electric vehicles, hybrid battery systems, AIdriven data centers, all of them rely on silver for conductivity, reliability, and performance. India, once a sleeping giant in the silver world, has become the largest importer globally, overtaking China in 2025. The metal is vanishing from vaults. Shanghai inventories have collapsed to record lows. Comx deliveries just hit their highest monthly volume since 2021, crossing 110 million ounces in a single month. And the miners, they can't keep up. New discoveries are rare, grades are declining, and investment in exploration is shrinking just as demand is exploding. So what happens next? When physical buyers realize the shelves are empty? When investors flood into an already undersupplied market? And when the illusion of abundance finally cracks, prices don't just rise, they detach from reality. This isn't just a bullish setup. It's a historic scarcity crisis. And silver is about to be repriced accordingly. >> Engine. That engine is so critical to the US banking system, which is so critical to the global banking system, which is so critical to US treasury purchases, and so critical to derivatives trades, which are collateralized by US treasuries like the repo markets. I'm grossly simplifying, but you don't need to get into complex to basically understand when you see repo rates surpassing the overnight the Fed funds rate, excuse me. That's a sign that a banks are losing trust and b and b there's a liquidity problem. And what that has to do with gold, of course, is to go to the reverse repo facility to bail out the repo markets, to bail out the banks that use those markets is really just QE by another name. And so QE of course is printing money out of nowhere to provide liquidity. That's expansion of credit. That is indirectly an expansion of the money supply. Inflation is the measure of the expansion of the money supply. And when inflation, however, it's misreported by the CPI scale increases because of currency debasement through expansion of the money supply. That's usually and always a tailwind for an anti- fiat uh instrument like precious metals in general and gold and silver in particular. So these little tiny corners of the Wall Street world which are the reverse repo markets and the repo market and the overnight markets are again not on the water cooler conversations of your average conversation at work. It's not what you talk to your wife with with a coffee at breakfast. It's usually not the first conversation at a football game or a golf outing, but it's there. It's ticking in in in plain sight, kind of hiding in plain sight. It's very much misunderstood, but the ripple effects of spiking repo rates uh can be very very dangerous. And again, 2019 was an extreme example. We're not at those rates now, but the fact that we're there is no shock. We've had Powell trying to tighten the balance sheet all year, keeping rates low, but clearly as of December, there's clearly a sign from the repo markets. It's on that dashboard of your car. It's a symptom that liquidity is tightening. When credit tightens in a world that is supported by easy credit or debt, when you start to see warning signs on the dashboard like that, this far into a debt cycle where we're literally at 38 trillion in public debt, where we're projected to have 50 billion, this Congressional Budget Office says 50 billion by 2033. When you see that kind of debt and that sustains us and then credit markets tightening in those debt markets or lending tightening and we see it in the subprime markets, we see it in in private equity and private uh credit pools. We're seeing little symptoms all over the place of credit tightening in a world so enamored and so survivable by debt to see these type of warning lights whether it's at the repo markets and we can talk about the uh the private equity markets the private credit markets this is this is not a good sign in an already world full of bad signs from Main Street to Wall Street. So again, these simple little repo rates are a screaming indication that credit is tightening, liquidity is becoming drier. Boy, those are shark fins in a market sustained by debt like this. That's the simple answer. And of course, the solution will be mouseclick money, fire hose money, helicopter money, whatever you want to call it, bazooka money. That's typically a tailwind for precious metals, which already have so many tailwinds on their backs as it is. It's just one more, you know, bullcase for for gold. Again, I'm a gold guy, but I'm not doing data mining. This is a data analysis. In my mind, it's just another another warning sign. >> Now, combine that scarcity with the unstoppable wave of industrial demand, and you get the perfect storm. Silver isn't just being hoarded by investors running from fiat. It's being consumed at record-breaking speed by the green energy revolution. And here's the critical detail. This demand is inelastic. That means solar panel manufacturers, EV makers, and power grid builders don't care what the price is. They need the silver. They can't replace it. They can't delay it. And they definitely can't function without it. In 2025 alone, the world is on track to install over 550 gawatt of solar capacity. That's more than 220 million ounces of silver in one year just for solar. Electric vehicles. Silver use in batteries, inverters, and onboard electronics is up 25% year-over-year. Data centers, especially the AI powered giants that now power everything from search engines to military systems, are consuming silver in ways never seen before. Through high efficiency bus bars and precision connectors and it's not just happening in the West, India, China, Southeast Asia, these regions are accelerating silver use across infrastructure, power generation, and consumer tech at unprecedented rates. The Silver Institute now projects industrial use to hit over 60% of total demand. A complete reversal from silver's past role as a primarily monetary asset. Here's the key. This industrial demand isn't driven by hype. It's driven by policy, by government mandates, by global net zero commitments and trillion dollar energy transitions. And that means it doesn't stop. Not even if silver triples in price. In fact, the higher it goes, the more urgent the scramble becomes. Because every nation, every company, every builder of tomorrow's grid is now fighting over the same shrinking pool of metal. The physical market is tightening. Inventories are draining. And silver is about to break free from the financial system that has kept it suppressed for decades. That isn't even a gold bug case anymore, Elijah. I mean, again, look at uh Jeffrey Gunlack, Double Line. He's the bond king. He's very aware of US treasuries and US currencies and other currencies and other spreads. He he recommends a 25% allocation to gold with a straight face. Jamie Diamond, head of JP Morgan, clearly has been kind of ignoring gold in the headlines for decades. He says gold can easily go to 10,000. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, but Morgan Stanley famously Michael, you know, Mike Wilson, Mike Hartnett, they're all saying 60, 40, no, 60, 20, 20, you need 20% in gold. So, it's not even the gold bugs anymore, as I've said many times, that are pounding their fist and screaming about this pet rock, this barbarous relic, buy my gold, you know, come to my service. It's not us anymore that are saying this, although I think I'm very proud of seeing this years in advance. Now, the mainstream financial markets, the mainstream banks are having to allocate to gold. I think largely because their clients are demanding it now and largely because they can't ignore what they've been able to do for 20 years. Gold's obvious role again if you know the problem you need to see the solution more clearly even the the large too big to fail banks like Goldman Sachs like Morgan Stanley like JP Morgan and even the equities guys like Jeremy Grantham like Ray Dalio have a lot of gold and even the bond guys have a lot of gold and again we have clients from over 90 countries I will never say who they are I'm just saying you'd be surprised who they are because they're not you know they come from banks and funds that talk about dollars all the time, but they're they're personally holding gold. So, I see it anecdotally. I see it objectively in the markets. I see it at the banks. I see it the BIS. It's it's almost easy now to be a gold bug. And there are so many Johnny come lately is the American expression who coming to gold now. There's so many platforms that are talking about gold now where you and your father and your your partners have been there for years. Sheckchman has been there for years. Egon has been there for years. For a lot of the times, we were the kooky guys. Even though we had Wall Street backgrounds and relative good credentials, people that were just selling our book and and we've been very sincere. I think I'm very proud of it and very honest about our strong views. And what's interesting now is our strong views are just part of the mainstream now. It's almost too easy to talk about gold. And uh I I I think it's a it's a it's an interesting time after all these years looking at precious metals, having come from risk assets myself, having come from a banking background, having been on the buy side as a family office executive, looking at hedge funds and spreads and private equity and private credit. I've written for years about the risks in private credit, in subprime, in AI, and now it's all just becoming mainstream. It makes me feel kind of good, but I, you know, I'm not smug. There's all kinds of other risks, but I don't have a lot of fear about precious metals. And I really don't look at the price. But yeah, there's just so many signals, including in the banking system, that folks should at least consider gold and silver a lot more serious. >> And while industrial demand drains the vaults, something even more explosive is brewing beneath the surface. An allout rebellion against the paper silver market. For years, ComX has functioned like a pressure valve, allowing banks and traders to short silver contracts far beyond what physically exists. This has kept prices artificially low, dampening sentiment and distorting the true supply demand balance. But that game is reaching its final chapter. The signs are everywhere. Physical premiums are exploding. Silver Eagles are selling at 6 to 7 over spot in the US. And in India and China, buyers are paying 12% to 18% premiums just to get metal in hand. Comics open interest has ballooned to over 925 million ounces. Yet the vaults backing those contracts are steadily bleeding out. In November alone, more than 110 million ounces were delivered, the highest monthly figure in years. At the same time, CFTC data shows speculative longs are at 10-year highs, meaning the momentum is accelerating, not slowing down. But here's what really matters. When people no longer trust paper claims to silver, they start demanding the real thing. And when enough do, the entire paper pricing mechanism collapses. We've seen hints of this before. Remember the Reddit silver squeeze in 2021? That was a tremor. What's coming now is a tectonic shift. Because this time, it's not just retail. It's sovereigns, industrial giants, and financial institutions all reaching for the same dwindling pile of physical ounces. When the illusion breaks, when one large player demands delivery and comics can't respond, the short squeeze won't just send silver to $50 or $100. It will obliterate the entire pricing structure because in that moment the world will realize the paper silver market was never about fair value. It was about control. And once that control slips, silver is free to find its true price, unbound by manipulation and driven purely by panic, scarcity, and desperation. Repo markets and repo, you know, spreads with the Fed funds rate. It's it's it's really meant to be boring and kind of innocuous and something complex and the government will fix it. Don't worry the inflation. Well, I I hear that the scale is kind of bogus, but you know, it's it's, you know, around 3% 2.5. It's okay. Well, no, it's not okay. The again, we could spend an hour on this. You can take my word for it. You can look up John Williams. You can go to Shadow Stats. You can look at other uh very very smart guys like Neil Lever. There's a couple other folks that really do track inflation using the same scale that we used during the Vulkar era, which is the only way to be fair. You got to take the same IQ test to measure intelligence. You can't have two different tests. You can't have two different CPI scales to measure inflation if we're comparing ourselves to where we were in say 1980. It has to be the same scale. That scale has been adjusted 22 times since 1980. But if we use the if we use a real scale, the actual inflation is actually 10 or 11%. not the reported inflation, which again I think everyone on Wall Street knows is bogus. They're never right, but they're always correct because it's the official number. But let's just say it's 10%. Let's say it's 7%. If you're losing 7% per year on the purchasing power through the invisible tax of misreported inflation, you're being robbed. I mean, that's it's it's a robbery. And so inflation really does matter. How it is measured really does matter. How it is reported really does matter. I personally think, like many others, the inflation scale is an open lie. Now, you don't have to take my word for it. Do some research. Look up some of the alternative inflation scales. There's some who say it's much lower. I've looked at them. They're they're laughable what they're doing, how they're making that make it work. But if we use the same scale that we measured inflation with during the highest inflation period under Vulkar, we're very close to 11% right now. Now, of course, if I were a government agent or a leader or I was at the BLS or the Fed or the White House, I would not want that news to be known. And as you know, JeanClaude Junkcker, the former head of the European Commission said, when the news is really bad, we just lie. That sounds sensational. But again, um, you know, I think the evidence is fairly objective that the CPI scale, as I've said so many times, is as bogus as a 42nd Street Rolex. It's just not real. And yet, it is so important to understand. And whether even if you think it's 3%, let's be extremely conservative. Well, that's a compounding loss of your money every year. If you go in the middle and say it's 5%, it doesn't take many years for you to lose more and more purchasing power. Which is why you don't want to save in a in a paper currency because whether gold or silver goes up in a straight line or not is irrelevant. It holds its value objectively more than any paper currency. So, while you're saving at that bank or wherever you keep your money and you're and you're keeping that folders can because you're so proud of the savings, what the government is doing is it's stealing your savings. It's stealing the purchasing power. It is more than invisible tax. It's literally theft. And and whether you're making billions or millions or tens of dollars a week, that's insulting to whatever you have. And and again that explains why the world in the central banks and even the counterparties in the commercial banking system want their physical gold now more than they want US dollars and US treasury. While Western investors are only just waking up. The rest of the world has already started to reposition and silver is quietly being drafted into the new monetary order. At the November 2025 brick summit, for the first time ever, silver was explicitly mentioned alongside gold in proposals for a new precious metalsbacked trade settlement mechanism. This isn't some speculative theory. It's a clear signal that silver is being remonetized on the global stage. And it's not just talk. Central banks in countries like Poland, Turkey, Hungary, and several across Asia have begun adding silver to their reserves. Small additions, yes, but deeply symbolic. Because here's the truth. The world is rapidly moving away from the US dollar. In 2025 alone, central banks bought a record 1,245 tons of gold, while the dollar's share in global reserves dropped to under 58%. And while gold is the headline, silver is the wild card. It's abundant enough to serve everyday trade, divisible enough to be practical, and cheap enough for emerging economies to accumulate in size. In other words, it's the perfect people's money in a post-dollar world. And the geopolitical motives are obvious. Nations are tired of weaponized finance. They've seen reserves frozen, sanctions used as leverage, and Swift turned into a political tool. So, they're building parallel systems, and they need real assets to anchor them. Gold gives credibility. Silver gives accessibility. Together, they offer a monetary foundation outside the reach of Washington or Wall Street. This is the macro shift most investors are blind to. While Wall Street watches the Fed for rate cuts, the rest of the world is ditching treasuries, accumulating metal, and preparing for a settlement system where precious metals once again define value. And when silver becomes part of that system, when it shifts from industrial input to monetary asset, the upside isn't just high, it's incalculable. So now, let's talk numbers. Because the idea of $1,000 silver might sound insane until you run the math. First, look at silver's all-time high, around $50 in 1980 and again in 2011. Adjust that for real inflation, true inflation, not the CPI fantasy, and we're already well past $150 just to match historical purchasing power. But that's just the starting point. Now, factor in the gold to silver ratio. At 79 to1 today, we're still far above the historical average of 60 to1 and nowhere near the extreme seen in silver bull markets where the ratio compressed to 30 to1 or even 15 to1. If gold hits $3,000 in the coming wave, and many analysts now see that as conservative, a 15:1 ratio would price silver at $200. But again, that's just the beginning because this time it's not just about price catchup. It's about repricing. Imagine just a fraction of global financial assets, say 1%, moving into silver. That's trillions of dollars chasing a market with less than $2 billion in daily physical liquidity. It doesn't take much for the bid to completely overwhelm supply. Silver isn't like real estate or equities. It can't scale. It doesn't print. It doesn't split. And when capital floods in, it has nowhere to go but up vertically. And what happens when the comx breaks? When bricks integrate silver into trade settlement, when industrial demand accelerates while inventories collapse, the price isn't dictated by models. It's dictated by panic, by math, and by physics. And in that scenario, $1,000 isn't a moonshot. It's just the point where buyers and sellers finally meet in a market no longer distorted by leverage, suppression, and synthetic supply. We're not forecasting fantasy. We're mapping a logical endpoint to the system we're already watching collapse. Silver won't just move, it will be revalued. And once that revaluation begins, there will be no going back. This is the moment everything converges. The banking system is breaking from within. The repo market is screaming distress and the Fed is backed into a corner with only one move left. Fire hose liquidity that will annihilate the value of the dollar. At the same time, industrial silver demand is soaring, physical supply is vanishing, and global powers are rewriting the rules of trade with precious metals at the center. Gold will shine, yes, but silver will ignite. Because it's not just a hedge anymore. It's the release valve, the monetary escape hatch and the industrial backbone of a new financial order. This isn't about speculation. It's about inevitability. When liquidity dies, when trust dies, when fiat dies, silver lives. And not at $25 or $50 or even $100. When the dust settles, silver will be revalued not by markets, but by necessity. Whether it's $500 or $1,000, the world is about to discover that silver was never just another commodity. It was always the ace hidden in plain sight. So don't wait for the headlines. By the time the world catches up, the breakout will already be underway. Make sure you're ahead of the curve. Subscribe for more urgent updates as this monetary reset unfolds. And remember, this is not financial advice. Speak to a professional before making any investment decisions.