Jeff Nielson for Sprott Money Making New Year “predictions” used to be an automatic, beginning-of-the-year exercise, to the point where readers generally expected such pieces from the pundits they follow. However, it is an activity which has died-out somewhat, a casualty of our propaganda-saturated Wonderland Matrix. When all that we can see around us is nothing but fiction and illusion, all events appear to be arbitrary – since we are unable to observe cause-and-effect. By definition; arbitrary events cannot be predicted. Thus these New Year’s “predictions” have become a Fool’s Game, and having been burned once (several times?), most commentators have reached the similar conclusion that this is an exercise in futility. Even from a Big Picture standpoint; attempting to estimate when the bubbles will burst, and the Ponzi-schemes will come crashing down is problematic. There is abundant, human history showing that at times of market (or economic) extremes, a collective cultural insanity sets in, allowing such extreme conditions to persist much longer than any rational estimation would predict. In our current Ponzi-scheme economic system, operated by the most ruthless, rapacious crime syndicate in the history of humanity; this cultural insanity has been deliberately induced, through 24/7 brainwashing. The Zombies are never allowed to see/hear opinions or evaluations which run contrary to the brainwashing, thus they never even consider alternative possibilities. “Everyone” (all the drones of the propaganda machine) says that the U.S. “economic recovery” has now turned into an economic boom. “Everyone” says there is no end in sight to this pseudo-expansion, so the Zombies are incapable of even conceiving of a reality different from the “don’t worry/be happy” pablum of the Corporate media. The reality that the U.S. economy is in a Greater Depression which is rapidly worsening is completely invisible to the Zombies – despite the evidence of the economic carnage all around. Yet in spite of all the reasons for not making beginning-of-the-year predictions; there will be a prediction made here this year. Why? Because (imprudently?) a “prediction” was made at the beginning of 2014, in a piece titled Silver Bells. It concludes with the following paragraph: The year 2014 should be the “year of silver”, in terms of fundamentals dictating a correction in prices which dwarfs the modest tripling which took place in 2009. However, if 2014 is not the year of silver; we should feel quite confident in predicting that 2015 will be the Year of Silver Default. While an obvious effort was made to present this as a shared prediction; “we” did not predict that 2015 will be the Year of Silver Default. This was my prediction, and it’s time to either stand by it, or run from it. In this respect; there will be a little bit of both. It would seem (in retrospect) more advisable to label this, more generally, as “the Year of Default” rather than (specifically) the Year of Silver Default. The reason for adding this degree of ambivalence is that in terms of what can visibly be seen in this totally opaque marketplace; all indications have been that the One Bank’s primary, recent concern has been its collapsing gold inventories rather than its collapsing silver inventories. We need merely review recent history to substantiate this conclusion. First the One Bank triggered the greatest “gold rush” in global history in 2013, as (for a variety of reasons) perpetrating the Cyprus Steal induced the most-frenetic wave of gold-buying ever. We know this was of great concern to the banking crime syndicate, since the One Bank immediately intervened. It blackmailed India’s government (through yet more of its rapacious currency-manipulation) into placing almost a complete embargo on gold imports. But the embargo failed. It then ordered its puppets in the U.S. government to engineer a coup in Ukraine, where (among the banksters’ objectives) they promptly looted all of that nation’s gold, as soon as they had placed their own Thugs in power. But clearly that hasn’t even begun to satisfy the One Bank’s sudden lust for gold-stealing. As readers know; it is presently engaged in its most ambitious “operation” (i.e. economic terrorism) to date. This time; its target is nothing less than Russia. While the One Bank has various reasons for presently directing its animosity at Russia, we know one of its primary motivations, because it has been broadcast by the drones of the Corporate media again and again. Traders Betting Russia’s Next Move Will Be To Sell Gold This sudden obsession of Western media drones with Russia’s gold is transparent. As noted in a recent commentary; extortion is one of the One Bank’s favorite enterprises, and one cannot conduct extortion unless one makes their demands known. As also noted; this simply replicates the pattern we saw with India. First the One Bank induced a “currency crisis” in that nation’s economy, and then the Corporate media drones “predicted” that the (so-called) currency-crisis would evaporate as soon as India’s government blocked-off gold imports. With the banksters clearly demonstrating a current obsession with gold (and their own lack of it); what then could have compelled the original prediction that 2015 would be the Year of Silver Default? There were two reasons why, despite the events of 2013, it was “silver default” and not gold default which was predicted at the beginning of 2014. To begin with, we have two fundamental differences between the gold market and the silver market: 1) Silver has enormous “industrial demand” to go along with massive, global demand for silver as money/jewelry. 2) Because of (1), and because many of silver’s industrial applications require only tiny amounts of silver; most of the world’s silver has literally been “consumed” by these applications, with global stockpiles of silver now spread throughout the world’s endless stockpiles of garbage. It is because of these two fundamental differences between gold and silver usage that we see a further differentiation between the two markets. Most of the world’s “gold demand” can (and has been) satisfiedwith paper. Going back to Jeffrey Christian’s infamous gaffe in 2010 at a CFTC hearing; we know that the “gold market” is composed of 1% actual gold, and 99% paper-called-gold. While much of the “investment” demand for silver can (and has been) diluted with identical fraud selling paper-called-silver (and perhaps to even a greater degree than the gold market), the banksters can’t use their fraudulent paper to meet the industrial demand for silver. Nor can they use paper to satisfy the demand for real metal originating in Eastern nations, where the One Bank’s various paper-for-metal frauds are entirely ineffectual. Why? Because a vast amount of Eastern demand for gold/silver originates among the peasant populations of these nations. Lacking even access to banking services, the bankers cannot employ any of their paper-for-metal frauds on these peasant populations. Only real, physical bullion can satisfy this demand. Furthermore, when the One Bank launched its ill-conceived (but desperate?) attack on India’s gold market, the temporary disruption in India’s gold supply caused a massive stampede into silver. India’s silver imports in 2013 broke its previous record for silver imports in 2008, triggered by the plunge in the price of silver which accompanied the Crash of ’08. And its silver imports in 2014 may have exceeded last year’s record. Thus while we see the banksters visibly obsessing over gold, this unprecedented drain on global silver stockpiles (after 50 years of steady erosion) must also be a grave concern for this crime syndicate. For all these reasons; it now seems much more constructive to simply discuss “bullion default”, rather than attempting to specifically identify whether such a default event would first occur in the silver market, or the gold market. Clearly, persuasive reasons can be presented for either metal. Furthermore, as we saw/see in India; in attempting to avoid bullion-default with one metal, the banksters could easily (inadvertently) trigger some investment stampede which then causes a bullion default with the other metal. Will 2015 be the Year of (bullion) Default? That question will be answered in roughly 360 days (or less). For 4 ½ years; we’ve known that the gold market (and silver market) is leveraged by at least 100:1, because 4 ½ years ago; the banksters’ “bullion crisis” had already reached that degree of severity. Paradoxically, as the years have rolled by, and no default-event has occurred, the psychological illusion begins to grow that default will never occur – the frauds will simply go on forever. But physical supply-deficits cannot continue forever. While demand is inexhaustible, stockpiles are finite. We are 4 ½ years closer to gold-default or silver-default than when Jeffrey Christian first told us these Ponzi-schemes were already leveraged to the point of insanity. Recent events disclose even more-extreme drains on the banksters’ bullion stockpiles – and more-extreme gambits by the One Bank to endeavour to steal more bullion (i.e. gold). Lastly, we’re even beginning to see some signs of “restlessness” in the bankers’ paper-fraud markets, where bullion prices are currently showing more volatility than at any other time in recent years. Previous price-action over (in particular) the last three years has been month-after-month of flat prices, punctuated by intervals where bullion prices were marched steadily lower – in an orderly manner. Two-way volatility in prices is something which has not been seen in these markets since (early) 2011. Nothing lasts forever, particularly with respect to relentless supply-deficits for physical commodities. Bullion-default will take place soon, and (for many reasons) it appears that “soon” may finally arrive, in 2015. Jeff Nielson for Sprott Money