Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

We’ve not seen days like these for gold and silver since the late 1970s. It is nothing short of spectacular for investors and hoarders of the tried and true metals. People who have kept the faith in the real are being rewarded. For everyone else, these are scary signs concerning what might be coming our way.

For thousands of years, these two metals have been the most valued in human experience. That’s why they became money, which is the good we acquire to buy other goods. Money becomes that because the market selects the good in question. It’s the most marketable commodity.

Gold and silver have always fit the description because they have uniform quality, have a high value per unit of weight, they are durable, and are highly divisible. So they became money in most places in the industrializing world.

I recently bought some old U.S. quarters and dimes, which were made of silver. The price is far above the stated value because the money was devalued, while the specie value kept rising. They are really wonderful to hold and own because they serve as a reminder of what sound money means. They also symbolize economic and financial independence.

It’s been half a century since the age of fiat money dawned. The United States has tried an experiment to make due with a currency that has no underlying integrity. It’s just paper or just digits. This was supposed to be more modern. We turned our backs on the “barbarous relic,” as J.M. Keynes called gold.

The prediction made early in the fiat age was that these metals would fall in value to reflect their industrial uses.

The monetary premium would disappear because they would no longer be money. The intellectuals, not the relics, would be in charge now.

The very opposite happened.

Throughout the 1970s, both gold and silver boomed. It was a massive vote of confidence in the real and an insult to the new elites who promised a better system. It humiliated them.

We seemed to have embarked on another wave of the same. They are both soaring.

Source: Bloomberg

For all the world, this feels like a flight to the real. Central banks want gold and silver. Large investors. Heavily leveraged brokers. Huge institutions. Regular consumers. Everyone is grabbing as much of the stuff as possible right now.

Will there be a correction? Maybe. But this is truly worrisome. It reveals a lack of confidence in our fiat world.

The data right now seems to back up a genuine cause for worry. Inflation nearly disappeared completely once Trump took office. It happened without explanation. Maybe it was a reflection of optimism by business that they could eat more of the increased wholesale costs because big profits were headed their way.

While dramatic things are happening under Trump in many areas—immigration, trade, cuts in the power and reach of the civil service, the end of DEI, new liberties in speech, truth in public health—other realms have not been so great. Spending is out of control, still. The Fed has accelerated quantitative easing yet again. And the Trump administration is pushing for lower interest rates.

Meanwhile, inflation is no longer declining. It is increasing.

This is not a good trend. It is ominous for the Trump administration.

If there is one force in the world capable of wiping out all the good that has happened since January 2025, it is inflation. If people cannot pay their bills, all of politics becomes theater. People will blame Trump, rightly or wrongly. This will be on his watch.

There is this long history of governments being unaware of the inflation problem until it is too late. The Weimar central bank of 1920 had no idea that the complete destruction of the German currency was three years into the future. This is because central bankers always and everywhere are convinced that they have matters under control.

They do have things under control until they do not. This is the worry. The Fed right now needs to defy the Trump administration and keep rates high and money tight. They could in fact prompt a recession but this can be mitigated with deregulation and a lower tax burden.

What is not easily fixed is a second wave of inflation. This is precisely what the increase in precious metals prices portends. It is sending a grave signal that markets are unconvinced that the Trump administration has the fiscal and monetary situation under control. Truth is that it does not. The debt problem is getting worse, not better. The red ink seems to flow regardless of whatever DOGE has done and regardless of all the cuts in bureaucracy and agency costs.

Here is the root cause of the gold and silver boom. It represents a flight to safety in anticipation of some possible crisis in the future. But there are other matters too, such as an emerging regional bank crisis. There are lingering issues concerning commercial real estate yet resolved. No one knows for sure how firm or shaky the fiat financial system truly is.

A serious financial crisis could in fact be around the corner. Housing is out of control. Financial markets have gone absolutely bonkers over AI. The leverage in every sector is without precedent. It’s all rooted in a belief that a fiat world is practicable and possible. But is it really? Many people are starting to doubt it.

When you hold physical gold and silver, you feel it and know it. It is the real deal. No permissions. No governments. No authorities. No brokers. It’s secure value and nothing more. It represents independence and freedom.

Remember that we live in a time when trust is lost in nearly everything. It makes sense that this would extend to financial intermediaries too. No one is putting 100 percent of their net wealth into precious metals. Investing is all about hedging risk in many directions, involving many scenarios.

Apparently one of those scenarios that is being entertained among people with big money is the possibility of complete financial and monetary breakdown. The Trump administration needs to pay close attention to this and the signal it is sending. There are ways to fix this problem but it is going to require some very hard decisions.

The markets never tell the perfect truth but they are sending a message that deserves close attention. Gold and silver were supposed to be gone by now but here we are. They are back again and with ferocity.