Miles Franklin is celebrating its 25th year in business.  Of course, “celebration” is a relative term in the Precious Metals business, given how gold and silver demand tends to be directly correlated to decidedly “un-celebratory” events.  Even under the “best-case scenario,” PM’s are utilized to hedge against “run-of-the-mill” Central bank-induced inflation.  However, as the “barometer of bad tidings,” they are also invaluable in times of heightened political, economic and social uncertainty – which are both omnipresent and expanding as we speak.  The root cause of such issues, in most cases, is money printing – yielding “symptoms” that tend to manifest themselves across in countless aspects of our lives.

A perfect case in point is what’s going in the Ukraine, which was already was on the verge of economic collapse (no doubt, related to Western-exported inflation), and just happens to lie in a significant geopolitical region.  Whether the Russian invasion turns out to catalyze World War III remains to be seen.  But irrespective, events like this – which we assure you, will be repeated as the global fiat Ponzi scheme expands – are why one needs to protect themselves with the only assets that have historically survived such calamities.

Yesterday, TPTB were in near panic mode as global financial markets tumbled.  The Russian Ruble plunged, and European equity markets plummeted by 2%-3%.  The “Dow Jones Propaganda Average,” of course, was never allowed to fall by more than 1.5%; and ultimately, care of a prototypical “Hail Mary” rally in the day’s final minutes, closed down just 0.94%; i.e., just below the 1.0% level I long ago deemed the PPT’s “ultimate limit down.”  Conversely, Precious Metals’ gains were – also prototypically – capped from the second they opened Sunday night, until the last second of the New York trading day.  As always, the feeling that the Dow was about to surge, and PMs to plummet, was fostered by PPT algo-buying and Cartel algo-selling; in the latter case, due to blatant naked shorting.  And wouldn’t you know it, on a day when a “crisis event” was occurring, where did gold end up?  Yep, you guessed it – EXACTLY 2.0%; i.e., the Cartel’s “limit up” level on 99.9% of all trading days.

This morning, stock futures are soaring, whilst the Ruble has simply returned to the all-time low level it ended last week at.  And, of course, the Dow has already recouped yesterday’s losses.  The “news” couldn’t be more disjointed, as despite Russia having increased its troop presence in Ukraine from 6,000 to 16,000 overnight, the Western spin is that Putin is “softening” his stance on the situation.  In other words, propaganda galore, combined with ultra-heavy doses of money printing and market manipulation – as TPTB seek to “prove” all’s well.  Heck, the way Yahoo! Finance and other MSM lackeys write it, you’d think Putin pulled out of the Ukraine, said “sorry,” and kissed Obama’s ring.

Conversely, PM prices were attacked at exactly 2:15 AM EST – for the 180th time in the past 203 trading days – and on through the New York paper pre-market as well.  In other words, par for the course, after yesterday’s blatant “Cartel Herald” capping at the 12:00 PM EST “cap of last resort.”

In our view, they are simply utilizing the same, time-honored suppression techniques we have witnessed throughout the 14 year PM bull market.  That is, capping all “geopolitically-motivated” gains and immediately eliminating them to avoid the masses from making a connection.  They did the same thing after last year’s Cyprus bail-in; the August 2011 U.S. debt downgrade; and essentially every such “crisis event” since the turn of the century.  Of course, in each case the PM’s simply garnered stronger physical demand, setting the stage for a renewed rise in future months and years.

Remember, we don’t own Precious Metals due to the possibility of “black swan” events like Ukrainian revolutions; but instead, the general certainty of fiat currency inflation – which, as noted above, tends to cause such events.  It should be no surprise that the U.S. Mint sold 599,000 ounces of silver yesterday alone; which is why the Cartel was terrified enough to initiate today’s PAPER raid.  And we assure you, with news like this – regarding a collapsing global economy (before the Ukraine invasion), and this – of the rapid mainstream understanding of just how much gold demand is rising; it’s just a matter of time before the Cartel is destroyed – just as its predecessor the London Gold Pool, and EVERY government attempt to control real money throughout history.

Trading at prices below their respective costs of production, with an unprecedented level of global political, economic, and social tension – not to mention, money printing – we view the current environment as the most PM-bullish in our 25 years of business!