Precious metals markets kicked off trading for the third quarter by posting modest declines across the board. 

However, the technical bigger picture for gold and silver still looks strong after the metals recorded impressive gains in Q2.  Gold finished out the quarter trading at its highest level since 2012. That has bulls anticipating new all-time highs for the monetary metal in the near future.

Even though gold is outperforming the stock market in 2020, it isn’t getting much attention from the Wall Street-centric financial media. We suspect public interest in precious metals will begin to surge once gold hits a new record and trades over $2,000. Then the media will be forced to start paying more attention to the sector.

Turning to silver, the white metal showing a 2% gain year to date.  That belies the fact that silver has surged over 50% since the March panic bottom.

Silver has also significantly outperformed gold over that period. The gold:silver ratio has narrowed from an unprecedented extreme of 127:1 to 98:1.  With investors being able to obtain 98 ounces of silver for about the same price as a single ounce of gold, silver still represents a compelling value proposition within the precious metals space.

With Independence Day coming up on Saturday, it’s an opportunity to reflect on America’s sound money foundations – and how far we have since strayed from them. 

Thomas Jefferson once said of fiat money that it “is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted."

The author of the Declaration of Independence believed that precious metals were a necessary foundation of a free and fair economy. The Founders specifically wrote gold and silver into the U.S. Constitution as the legal tender of each of the states. 

They feared that concentrating power in the hands of a central bank would pose a grave threat to the liberty of the people. But even their worst fears have been far exceeded by the Federal Reserve’s recent QE-infinity power grabs. 

The Fed has made the entire economy dependent on it and controlled by its arbitrary decisions.  Central bankers and politicians together have rendered the average American a permanent financial slave to accumulated debt obligations that can never be paid off in a lifetime.   

Instead of rising up in anger against the corrupt central banking cartel that is actually oppressing them, some Americans have been duped into attacking their own history.  Big banks and big tech companies are literally pouring millions of dollars into groups that are fomenting racial and social unrest in cities across the country.

It’s culminating in the toppling of statues that the mob finds offensive for any reason. It was never really about slavery. And the mob was never going to be placated by the purging of Confederate symbols.

The war on history is now targeting Abraham Lincoln emancipation statues in Boston and Washington, D.C.  These monuments to freedom were originally erected with the support of freed blacks.

But today’s cultural revolutionaries disapprove of the way emancipation was depicted by those who actually witnessed it. And so they demand that it be erased from America’s historical memory. 

Their end goal is to completely wipe out American history as it was understood by the people who lived through it. The only approved history will be that which can be seen through their ideological lens. By severing any tangible connections between Americans and their past, we will be left demoralized and easier to control.

For all this faults, President Donald Trump seems to understand what’s at stake in the war on history. On Wednesday, he vowed to veto a Senate bill that would erase the names of Confederate generals from U.S. military bases.

One is named for Robert E. Lee in honor of his widely praised generalship and character. Like Jefferson and Lincoln, Lee opposed slavery on moral grounds. And at the conclusion of the war between the States, General Lee was one of the strongest voices for bringing the country back together in a spirit of unity.

Today some fear that deepening divisions in America could cause the Union to break apart all over again. The upcoming election will certainly be contentious.  And depending on the outcome, violence and unrest in the streets could escalate.

Regardless of who wins, America’s Fed-fueled debt crisis will only worsen. The only political solution in sight for record-high budget deficits is to paper over them with more borrowing backed up by unlimited Fed bond purchases. In other words, more U.S. currency will have to be created out of thin air by the trillions.

Inflation will become a bigger problem.  Then, perhaps, an all-out currency crisis will hit as Americans and global holders of dollars lose confidence. 

In the meantime, you can take steps to prepare yourself financially for more currency debasement ahead. You can declare your independence from the inflationary fiat system by putting a portion of your finances on a hard money standard backed by physical gold and silver.