Gold and Silver Soaring as Investors Rush to Avoid Economic Time Bombs
Consequences often don’t show for long periods of time, but when they finally do, they can be incredibly painful. For decades, our leaders have been making incredibly stupid decisions, and for decades, people like me have been complaining about them. But most people thought everything must be okay because the consequences of those incredibly stupid decisions didn’t immediately affect us. Unfortunately, the moment of reckoning has arrived, and that’s the main reason why gold and silver are skyrocketing. The price of gold has reached $4,300 for the first time ever, and the price of silver has reached $53 for the first time ever. It’s exciting to watch gold and silver prices rise rapidly, but it’s crucial to understand that what we’re seeing is a flight to safety. Right now, we’re facing a government shutdown, an unprecedented global trade war, a liquidity crisis, a cryptocurrency catastrophe , a housing market implosion, a cost-of-living nightmare, and massive layoffs across the country. Economic time bombs are starting to explode all around us and the outlook for the coming months is definitely not rosy.
When asked about China on Thursday, President Trump openly admitted that we are currently in a trade war with the Chinese… writes Michael Snyder .
Two weeks before he was scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump told reporters that his spat with China over trade has escalated into a full-blown trade war.
When asked by a reporter whether the country would face a “prolonged trade war” with China if he couldn’t reach an agreement with Xi during their meeting in South Korea at the end of the month, the president said, “We’re already in it.”
After China decided to impose extremely alarming export restrictions on desperately needed rare earths, President Trump threatened to impose an additional 100 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, on top of the existing tariffs.
If that additional 100 percent tariff is actually implemented, most trade with China will come to an abrupt halt.
And if a bill currently pending in Congress actually becomes law, China could soon face a 500 percent tariff on all exports to the US if it decides to continue doing business with Russia…
Through the Sanctioning Russia Act, bipartisan lawmakers are preparing to impose a 500% tariff—a clear signal to the Kremlin and its allies: de-escalate the war in Ukraine or face severe economic consequences.
The measure, authored by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), gives President Donald Trump broad authority to impose economic sanctions on Russia.
Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal are not rational people.
I have no idea how they ever got elected for anything.
I can’t even imagine what the global economy would look like if the US simply cut off all trade with China, India, and Brazil, but that’s what could happen if this bill passes …
The law allows for secondary tariffs of 500% on imports from countries that continue to do business with Russia – primarily China, Brazil, and India.
Secondary tariffs are trade sanctions targeting third countries that maintain economic ties with a sanctioned country. In this case, they serve as an indirect means of exerting pressure on Russia by punishing its trading partners.
35 percent of the coffee we drink comes from Brazil.
Just think about that.
And our stores are full of products that come from China.
But if we charge them 500 percent “secondary tariffs,” there will be no more exports from those countries.
If we suddenly stop all trade with China, India and Brazil, we are really facing a major economic nightmare.
Most Americans don’t realize it, but we now import a huge amount of the beef we eat from Brazil.
In fact, we imported 197 million pounds of beef from Brazil in the month of January alone.
So what will happen to the price of beef if we stop trading with Brazil?
US meat prices have already risen to absolutely absurd levels …
On a recent trip to the supermarket, Kelvin Lin was surprised to see that the price of a rib-eye steak had risen to $32.99 a pound.
Two weeks earlier it was a few dollars cheaper, he said.
Lin, a 33-year-old software engineer living in New York City, complained to the butcher but ultimately bought the steak. “It feels awful,” he said.
Of course, almost everything else also becomes much more expensive.
In fact, the average price of a new car in the United States has surpassed $50,000 for the first time in history …
Five years ago, the average new car cost around $40,000. The current average of over $50,000 illustrates the rapid rise in prices and the transformation of what constitutes a “typical” new car purchase in the US. For many Americans, the new car market has definitively shifted toward affluent buyers and technologically advanced vehicles, with economic pressures and regulatory changes redefining both supply and demand.
The average price of a new car in the United States surpassed $50,000 for the first time in September. This marked a turning point for the auto market, as buyers increasingly opt for luxury vehicles and electric models. Industry analysis shows that multiple trends are converging and driving up prices, pointing to profound shifts in buying behavior and unprecedented challenges for budget-conscious consumers.
The only people who can afford new vehicles these days are those who are very wealthy or those willing to go into deep debt.
And if you go into deep debt to buy a new vehicle, the consequences can be huge.
Currently, millions of Americans are underwater on their car loans …
More than one in four trade-in cars had negative equity in the third quarter of 2025, Edmunds reports. In auto industry jargon, these loans were underwater.
Of all used cars traded in for a new one between July and September, 28.1% had negative equity. This means the cars were worth less than the owner owed on their car loan.
This figure is the highest in four years.
More and more Americans are also finding themselves with underwater mortgages, and now we’re being told the US housing market is “crashing” …
The US housing market is in a state of collapse.
Potential buyers are backing out of sales contracts in shocking numbers because their demands for expensive repairs and huge price reductions are not being met.
And sellers are angry that they even make these demands.
The number of sellers now far exceeds the number of buyers.
As a result, house prices are starting to fall, and this is one of the reasons why cancellations are rising so sharply …
An estimated 56,000 purchase agreements were abruptly canceled in August, representing 15.1 percent of homes under contract that month, the report said.
That amounts to a whopping one in seven home transactions where a buyer backed out. This is the highest cancellation rate ever recorded in August since Redfin began tracking these statistics in 2017.
Moreover, we are facing a growing employment crisis in this country.
According to a brand new study recently published, 60 percent of American workers don’t have a “quality job”…
According to new research from Gallup, which surveyed more than 18,000 workers across industries, occupations and employment types, a majority (60%) of American workers do not have a “quality job” that provides basic financial well-being, security and other factors.
“The key findings are certainly sobering,” says Maria Flynn, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, which helped conduct the study. “While the labor market is creating jobs, there aren’t enough jobs that truly enable workers to thrive.”
Unfortunately, more and more quality jobs are disappearing every day.
For example, NBC News plans to fire about 150 highly paid employees …
NBC News is preparing for its largest round of layoffs in years. According to a report, approximately 150 employees will lose their jobs this week as the network adjusts to life without its cable channels MSNBC and CNBC.
The layoffs, expected to begin Wednesday and last through Thursday, will affect about 7% of the news division’s 2,000 employees, Status reported.
Employees at NBC News headquarters are “dreading what’s to come,” a 30 Rock insider told Status.
And Nestlé just announced that they ‘re going to lay off about 16,000 highly paid workers …
Nestlé will cut about 16,000 jobs globally over the next two years to cut costs, including through automation, the world’s largest food company announced Thursday.
The majority of the layoffs – about 12,000 – will be in white-collar jobs as Nestlé focuses on “operational efficiencies,” including by automating processes and leveraging shared services, the company behind brands such as KitKat and Nesquik said in a statement.
AI, robots and other forms of technology are expected to replace millions of human workers in the coming years.
So this is just the beginning.
I fully understand that the information I’ve shared in this article is quite sobering.
But we were warned beforehand that these things were coming.
Why do you think so many of us have been railing for years about the value of the dollar, trade policy, reckless government spending, the fundamental flaws in the financial system, and the utterly insane things the Federal Reserve has done?
We complained about these things because they really matter.
And now the general population is beginning to see why they matter.
The US economy is really starting to fall apart, and the worst is yet to come.