Are Rising Gold Prices a Sign of Worse to Come?

Monday I mentioned that egg prices are on the rise, which I suspect you knew already. What concerns me is that rising prices across the board may be a sign to of worse things to come, but I’m only a paranoid prepper. 😉

Today I want to point out the rise in gold prices. They’re up to nearly $2900 per ounce, which is close to record highs. In fact, gold prices have rise from about $1600 per ounce over the past five years alone! It’s not quite a doubling, but close enough. Here’s a reference chart if you’d like to see for yourself. The interesting part is that the largest rise in price has occurred within the past 1.5-2 years. (Why that’s happening is up for you to decide, but central banks buying as much gold as they can tends to affect the price for the rest of us peasants.)

Of course, silver has risen in price, too. If you look at the bullionvalut.com chart again and choose silver instead, you’ll see that the price of silver is up as well. Though a bit more volatile than gold, silver is up about 50% since roughly two years ago.

Now, I’m not a financial expert, analyst, investment broker, or anything of the sort, but I do like to pay attention to such things because I believe they’re telling us a story.

What’s that story, you ask? It’s that the powers-that-be (or shouldn’t be) are wary of holding U.S. Dollars. Or perhaps they’re hedging their bets just in case the world financial system goes belly up. At least, that’s how I see it.

Perhaps they’re also afraid of BRICS or Bitcoin challenging the Dollar hegemony, or maybe WW3 is on their minds, or who knows what, but facts are the facts: the big money players are moving into precious metals and have been for a while.

Interestingly, commodities prices are largely down in the energy and metals sectors year-over-year with the exception of natural gas (and gold and silver). If you click on the link again and scroll down to the agriculture section, you’ll see that most prices are up with a few exceptions, particularly soybeans, rice, and potatoes as notable examples. On the flip side, foods like milk, coffee, cocoa, sunflower oil, and butter are up year over year. Continue scrolling down and you’ll get to the livestock section where almost everything is up, especially US eggs.

Now, I realize that the global economy is rather complex. There are so many market forces involved and so many players that it’s hard to draw precise conclusions at any given moment. But the trends are still there if you look back far enough even though a single year will suffice.

The items we need to live, including food, energy, and money, are getting more expensive. Sometimes it’s abrupt, as with natural gas and egg prices, other times it’s a slow march, as with gold and meat prices. The writing is on the wall, in my opinion. While I can’t say when or how it’s all going to go down, I continue to believe that we’re headed towards a collapse. How bad it will be, I don’t know.

But I’m a prepper for a reason, and I don’t plan on being bulldozed by circumstance. I encourage you not to, either. Get your shit together. Prepare as best as you can within your means. You and I can do it. I have faith.