The Rush to Gold: A New Respect Is GrowingBy Guy Christopher Gold and silver owners in the first ten years of this new century were in for quite a ride, watching gold soar to $1,895 and silver to $49 by 2011. Even those who jumped in midway saw their paper money values zoom. Gold had bottomed at $255.95, Apr 2, 2001. Note the gold bull began months before the attacks of 9/11. Silver bottomed nine weeks after the attacks at $4.06, alongside crashing stock markets. The national debt in 2001 was $5.8 trillion, on its way to todays $20 trillion. Savers and retirees could depend on CD and bond returns well north of 5%. U.S. bonds were still triple-A rated. You could take your cash from your bank without federal snooping. War on cash was an unknown socio-economic term. No one predicted massive, taxpayer funded bail-outs, threats of bail-ins, or the terrible twins, ZIRP and NIRP zero and negative interest rates. While the DOW and SP languished in the agony of three crashes from March of 2000 through 2009, gold and silver got no respect from Wall Street or financial media. Thats despite gold doubling in paper money terms 2.8 times from 2001 to 2011. Silver had 3.5 doubles. Both metals had short-lived drops along the way. Thanks, in part, to the top-down manipulation of bullion bank price suppression, gold steadily fell 55% and silver 72% from 2011 through 2015. Supply and demand played no role. Governments and banks did a superb job protecting the illusion paper money still has value. But no market goes up or down forever. After years of massive money printing, destructive interest rates, and a planet swamped in uncounted trillions of debt, the pendulum is swinging back to gold and silvers bull. Gold at $1280 is up 200 bucks (21%) since mid-December, with silver gaining 25% in the same period. Mining stock shares, more speculative than bullion, are up well over 100% since the first of the year. Higher risk, higher reward. Beltway insider Jim Rickards, among others, says gold could hit $10,000 per ounce, and higher. Silver specialist Ted Butler believes bullion banks are quietly reversing course, positioning for the inevitable resumption of the precious metals bull. If the money masters truly mean to steal all the worlds wealth, its reflected in the rush to gold. They are the ones rushing the fastest. Reports everywhere say the mega-wealthy individuals, investment firms, corporations and governments are piling into gold. True, those buying paper gold instead of physical are traveling bad roads using old maps, but at least theyve found the right continent. No less than former Bank of England chief Mervyn King has joined Alan Greenspan in praising gold, effectively criticizing their own obvious failures to rule the world with massive paper printing. Central banksters havent worked in tandem since they nervously flipped from selling gold to buying gold on the heels of the 2008 meltdown. The cartels pricing command is crumbling, as have all past schemes that ignored market fundamentals. Deutschebank has pleaded guilty to high crimes and treason against sound money, and is turning on other cartel members. Every major bank in the world has paid civil fines for rigging every economic market, though no one has yet gone to jail. China, once cheered as the worlds supplier of cheap junk, is now better known for gobbling up every ounce of gold it can find. Canadas Bank of Montreal has opened a physical gold trust for savers and investors specifying no paper gold allowed. The London Royal Mint has created a gold-based pension fund. The University of Texas Retirement System has held physical gold for years. Utah and Texas have embraced gold and silver as legal, everyday currency. Other states are watching. Texas is building a gold depository, shouting loudly it doesnt trust The Fed. National mints across the globe are reporting record sales of bullion coins. Dominating the headlines, the presidential campaigns of both anti-establishment candidates, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are described as revolutions. Not exactly Bunker Hill and Yorktown, but remember, American Independence came long after the 1773 Boston Harbor tea party. Open talk of revolution is telling you things are about to change. Listen closely. All of us will live in an entirely new world, for better or worse, in just five months. That may explain why the guy who pulls Europes purse strings, Jean-Claude Juncker, showed up drunk for a public relations photo-op, providing us a glimpse into the murky world of secret, imperial economic rule. The lesson we should have learned by now is to value precious metal as stand alone, private wealth, not dependent on paper money games played during drunken plots of money masters. Rising gold and silver simply means the dollars influence is falling. Paper dollars may not disappear in your lifetime, but the value of that paper is vanishing every minute of your life through government-planned inflation. Does good news for gold signal bad news everywhere else? Hyperinflation? Worldwide chaos? Maybe. But if so, then its seriously bad news for those who have no gold or silver, or not enough. With or without gold, each and every one of us is in for a quite another ride. MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher is a seasoned writer living on the Gulf Coast. A retired investigative journalist, published author, and former stockbroker, Christopher has taught college as an adjunct professor and is a veteran of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. 