In this week’s podcast, I sat down with Dana Samuelson of American Gold Exchange, and I discussed why gold and silver have been suspiciously weak ever since the Iran war started.
Sure, gold and silver have been consolidating after record gains set in late 2025 and into January 2026.
Dana argues that rising oil prices, higher inflation expectations, rising bond yields, and a temporarily stronger U.S. dollar are pressuring precious metals to the downside.
I argue that precious metals have fallen under the manipulation regime/umbrella that has dominated the trading landscape, even for oil as well as stocks.
But, hey, ‘price discovery’ is shifting ever eastward. Eventually the fake and gay U.S. ““markets”” will be as useful for decision-making as a catcall received at 2:00 am during Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street.
Dana and I discussed the major implications of navigating highly manipulated ““markets”” but here’s the thing: All that manipulation buys you is time, which could be a good thing if you are using that time to discover and implement solutions to the problems and predicaments in play.
But it’s perfectly clear: the powers that be are not at all interested in solutions. Which means we have to be laser-focused on our own responses and solutions.
Such are the times in which we live.
My broader concern is the collision between financial engineering and physical limits.
From oil and diesel to copper, silver, and fertilizer, algorithm-driven pricing and short-term market incentives are serving to obscure real shortages that are now on the way.
Note:
I find AI summaries to be quite useful. So here’s an AI summary of this week’s podcast. I’ll probably start including these going forward, but rest assured I will always be crystal clear when something is written by AI. Otherwise, I write everything that carries my name.
AI Summary:
The three points that carry the episode are the following:
- The dip in gold and silver is a pause, not a broken debasement trade. Higher oil has lifted inflation expectations, yields, and the dollar, and gold pays no coupon, so it is being pressured. China is on holiday, which usually softens metals until Shanghai returns. The 10–13 percent Shanghai silver premium is a 12 percent import VAT, not a failed arbitrage. Samuelson calls this consolidation after the 2025–early 2026 run: a gold floor near $3,976, a silver floor near $55, and a ranking of silver first (a double from $60 to $120 more plausible than gold doubling from about $4,150), then gold, platinum, and palladium.
- Paper prices are being set, not discovered. One-minute dumps in thin overnight sessions crush the bid stack, and oil gets a regular noon slam. Prompt Brent is about $126 and Russian barrels about $130, plus $20–25 of freight, so oil needed now costs around $150, while the front month sits under $90 and the curve prices it at $70–75 a year out. That gap is why Exxon is returning cash instead of drilling faster. Diesel is the sharp edge: Russia, China, and India have pulled product exports, the crack spread is about $122 over suppressed crude, and about 7–8 percent of global diesel capacity is impaired.
- The exit is print-and-debase, and physical metal is the hedge. Trump and Bessent have said the debt will be inflated away. Long yields are breaking out in the US, Japan, France, and Germany, and Samuelson sees no path except sacrificing the currency to save the bonds. A Volcker replay does not work: debt-to-GDP was about 35 percent in the 1970s, against roughly $116 trillion of debt now. The rhyme is the late-1970s oil shocks. China is treated as holding far more gold than the official figure under 3,000 tonnes, and Germany and the Netherlands repatriating metal is the tell that vault claims are no longer trusted.
Chris Martenson and Dana Samuelson spend the hour on why gold and silver have gone quiet while the debasement story has gotten louder. Oil lifts inflation expectations, yields rise, the dollar firms, and non-yielding metal sells off. Samuelson calls that temporary, points to a 2022 analog in which a yield spike was followed by a gold run, and notes that financial television has gone quiet on gold because AI is the hot trade. Under that, the physical story is tighter: a multi-year silver mine deficit, copper byproduct supply hit by weather and by sulfuric acid jumping from about $300 to $1,400 a ton, and pricing power shifting from COMEX paper toward Shanghai.
The larger frame is energy and fertilizer. Diesel, sulfur, and phosphate are impaired, a food shock is plausible next year, and even a clean Gulf settlement would take a year to normalize flows and three or four years to rebuild stocks. The shortage shows up as prices, and as activity that never happens: truckers parking rigs, farmers unsure the diesel and drying gas are worth the harvest. Their conclusion is that governments will print to contain the bond market, the currency takes the hit, and physical gold and silver, held rather than lent, are what survive that.
Timestamps
00:00 Gold, Silver, and the Great Debasement
01:40 Why Rising Yields Are Pressuring Gold
03:27 Is China Taking Over Gold Price Discovery?
04:22 Explaining China’s Silver Price Premium
05:45 Silver Shortages Meet Mining Disruptions
08:27 Are Markets Being Bullied?
11:21 Copper Shortages and the Price Signal
14:04 Paper Oil vs. Physical Reality
16:15 The Diesel Crisis and Refinery Shutdowns
19:20 The Economic Damage of Fuel Shortages
24:22 Governments Face the Debasement Dilemma
26:56 Are We Repeating the Inflationary Seventies?
29:53 China’s Long Game for Gold
33:27 Why Governments Want Their Gold Back
35:50 Gold Fever and the Pawn Shop Narrative
39:11 Algorithms, Bubbles, and Market Unreality
41:38 The Coming Energy and Food Shock
47:12 Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium
50:55 Why Rising Diesel Prices Threaten Mining and Farming
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by sand_puppy