Gold's Rise: A Sad Yet Somber Signal of Systemic Failure:

As gold and silver continue to break all-time-highs in 2025, the informed and uninformed global financial landscape seems to be squawking like headless chickens to make sense of what is ultimately a common-sense (and historical) price evolution in precious metals.
 

An simplest terms, this rise is due to yet another debt and credit cycle reaching a familiar uh-oh moment. As we’ve warned for years, when global debt surpasses global GDP by 3X, there comes a point wherein mouse-clicking new currencies from the laptops of central banks no longer works. At some point, paper money becomes an existential threat rather than short-term solution. This time is no different.

In the 16th century, Sir Thomas Gresham warned his queen that whenever bad money (i.e., paper currency) circulates at the same time as real money (i.e., gold and silver), informed citizens will eventually save in real money and spend in bad money.

This, of course, is precisely why global central banks now hold more physical gold than they do USTs. This is why even TBTF banks like Morgan Stanley have replaced the standard 60/40 stock/bond allocation with a 60/20/20 allocation in favour of gold. This is why the bond-king, Jeffrey Gundlach, openly recommends a 25% gold allocation.

And this is also why the BIS has made gold a Tier-One asset or Judy Shelton is pushing for a gold rather than dollar-backed UST.





























DEBT DESTROYS CURRENCIES & EMPIRES
The case studies of failed empires, from the Roman empire of 250 AD, the Portuguese empire’s demise under Phillip II in the 1500’s, or the fall of France in the 1780’s teach us something. As do the additional examples of the British empire’s post-World War II fall and the current example of the US Dollar’s slow death in 2025. In each of these examples and cycles, once-great nations slowly got too far in debt from over-spending in wars and domestic policies which resulted in an intentionally debased currency to monetise (i.e., inflate away) their embarrassing debts.

As the world lost faith in their monetary strength, their political and financial reputation, once thought immortal, supreme and hegemonic, slowly but surely became, well less so across the board. Rome still exists. Lisbon, Paris and London do too. And so does the great city of Washington DC. But none of these capitals or empires, like none of their currencies, hegemonies or empires, reign eternal.

FAILURE IS HARD
Such cycles and sins are hard for politicians, investors and even citizens to accept or admit with calm realism. History, after all, is harder to see when it’s happening all around you.

The USA and its dollar will not disappear. But their supremacy and purchasing power are objectively melting right before our closed eyes. The weakness and debasement of the world reserve currency to monetise drunken and unsustainable debt levels ($38T and ticking) is eating away at the absolute purchasing power of the USD. Gold is rising as a direct reaction to the ignored reality that fiat currencies are falling. Investors, however, who only see precious metals as trend lines on a chart akin to any other risk asset or commodity, are totally missing the bigger picture.

NOT YOUR ORDINARY ‘BULL MARKET’
Precious metals are not tech stocks, corporate bonds or mere hard asset “trades”—they are MONETARY METALS, and as such move and act in ways that most traders, pundits and investors misunderstand. Many, for example, have described the recent highs in silver and gold as “peak silver” or “peak gold,” which entirely ignores that these metals are stores of value and strategic reserve (saving) assets rather than standard, chart-confirmed risk assets. Their price direction is nothing like a NVDA or MSFT trade, because their role is nothing like a typical or even atypical security.

ANYTHING BUT ‘’PEAK’’ GOLD AND SILVER
Gold and silver are not “peaking”—they are replacing bad money from DC to Brussels because (as Gresham, Thiers, von Mises and countless other wise men and historical examples confirm) the world is witnessing a dying credit cycle, and in turn, a changing currency cycle. From the BRICS to the COMEX, the otherwise ignored signposts of this cyclical turning point are beyond dispute. De-dollarisation and the open preference for gold as a trade settlement asset over the USD are no longer a source of debate but an empirical fact.

GOLD: MORE THAN JUST A ‘TRADE’
India and China are dumping USTs at staggering levels. The COMEX outflows and inflows are signs of open confusion as counter-parties to these once price-fixing exchanges now want their physical metals at home rather than levered on OTC boards. Why? Because precious metals are just another asset for price appreciation? A temporary bull market trade? A way toward quick profit? Not at all.

Precious metals are rising because a world that once thrived on fiat money is now drowning in the debt swamps which fiat expansionary sins always create—a pattern as familiar to David Hume in 1752 as it was to von Mises in 1952. In other words, gold and silver’s “bull market” is not a trade, it’s an historical turning point in yet another global financial system failing due to the policy lie that an extreme debt crisis can be solved with more debt, paid for in printed dollars without consequences to the guilty nation and currency system that created it.

NEVER IN A STRAIGHT LINE
Again, gold embodies an historical shift, not a mere “bull-case” trade, but this by no means suggests that precious metal pricing only goes in a straight-line north. Pullbacks in such runs are not only inevitable, but expected. Timing them, however, is something no one can do accurately. But for those who understand precious metals as monetary metals which hold their purchasing power infinitely better than paper money, the timing of such price moves is of little concern, as they “save in the metals” for the long term.

There can be dramatic cyclical falls in gold pricing in the midst of an otherwise secular bull market. From 1971 to 1980, for example, when gold moved from $35/ounce to $850/ounce, the case for such a “bull” was undeniable. But many forget that in 1975, gold lost 25% in a single year half-way through this “bull market” —causing many to panic sell and call a false “peak” in the metal.



















HEADLINE NOISE
We see similar headline panics now if gold loses 8% in a week despite having doubled from $2000 to $4000 in 18 months. Such de-contextualised fears and false top-callings come from those who still see precious metals as just another commodity or security trade rather than as evolving monetary substitutes for fiat-driven debt cycles. In short, gold has a long, very long way to go—well past $10,000 in the years ahead, but this will not be without pullbacks, which almost no one can time but which long-term investors will not fear.

THE SMART MAN’S SILVER
Silver, of course, is making its own path forward as it consistently moves beyond prior all-time-highs. As a monetary metal itself, silver is not merely “the poor man’s gold” but rather the “smart man’s silver.” Silver is emerging from a 4-year supply deficit and a COMEX market which no longer owns enough of the segregated metals to maintain its decades-long price fix (i.e., permanent short) on the beleaguered metal. With a market cap that is one-half that of NVDA, any meaningful demand in silver can send its price markedly higher. This demand is now occurring from silver’s dual monetary and industrial profiles.

From solar panel and electronic battery components to silver stacking in India, the supply-demand set-up for silver offers extraordinary upside for far-sighted silver investors. Equally rewarding set-ups, of course, are to be found in precious metals equities. The mining and junior mining indexes have seen +100% moves in 2025 which portend far more expansion (and yes, volatility) ahead as the spot price for gold and silver well exceed production costs.

KEEP IT SIMPLE
For us, however, the core driver behind precious metal investing is, will be, and always has been the same, namely: Wealth preservation. Gold objectively holds its value better than any fiat currency. We are, of course, enjoying the headline-making price appreciation in the precious metals, but have never forgotten that measuring that price movement in ever-debased paper currencies is riddled with ironies, for these currencies are inherently poor measures of any real value.

At VON GREYERZ, we measure money and wealth in ounces, grams and kilos rather than Dollars, Yen or Euro’s. Yes, gold will rise much higher in fiat terms, but so will the cost of just about everything else, despite deflationary and inflationary signals. We have always warned that rising gold prices are not a matter to be celebrated, as they are a signal of significant monetary failure from the top down, and deep economic pain from the bottom up. In this light, gold was never seen as an exciting “get rich” asset, but rather as a “stay rich” metal in the setting of a global financial system teetering, once again, into a debt and hence currency spiral.   EG