➡ The BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is creating a gold-backed trade system that could replace the dollar. This system is gaining support from over 40 countries and is based on tangible value, not debt. Silver is also expected to play a significant role in this shift, as it has in past monetary changes. The shift is not just political, but also represents a major change in what the world considers money, with silver set to gain prominence.

➡ The U.S. economy is at risk due to a potential stock market collapse and increased business refinancing costs. The government’s response is to print more money, which could lead to the devaluation of the dollar. Meanwhile, the value of silver is expected to surge due to its increasing demand and decreasing supply. This could lead to a shift towards sound money, with silver becoming a valuable asset in a debt-ridden world.

So we could indeed have up to 10 trillion of stock being held on margin. If that’s the case, falling values, and I would include bitcoin in this, likely to trigger automatic selling if you like, as the value of collateral backing those loans diminishes. Holding stocks is getting a very, very dangerous gain. I think we could be in for a period of enormous volatility and I think it’s important to understand why that bot volatility is there. And then you can probably navigate your way through. You’re watching Silver News Daily. Subscribe for more silver investors. Brace yourself. A former bank director has just sounded the alarm on a financial time bomb buried deep within the system.

$10 trillion in margin debt. Not millions, not billions. Trillions hidden leverage that’s now buckling under its own weight, threatening to trigger a wave of forced selling so severe it could bring the entire dollar system crashing down. But that’s just the beginning. As the Fed prepares to flood the market with fresh liquidity in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, something far more monumental is happening on the global stage. The BRICS nations have revealed their end game. A gold backed currency designed to dethrone the dollar and reset the world’s monetary order. And silver? It’s caught in the crossfire, but not in the way you think.

If Alastair MacLeod’s prediction is right, we’re not talking about $50 silver or even $100. He sees a price explosion that could take silver to $1500 and beyond. This isn’t just a warning, it’s a roadmap to the end of fiat and the birth of a new silver age. Not quite no statistics, but there’s certainly statistics that people follow, like employment statistics and so on and so forth. They’ve been suspended, they’re about to come back. There’s nervousness that those statistics might show that the economy isn’t performing as well as people hope or think. On top of that, of course, we’ve seen bitcoin fall very, very substantially.

I mean, remember at one point it was $126. Today it dipped below $90, though it’s recovered a little bit since then. There’s been a sort of talk about the Magnificent Seven and how they seem to be losing momentum, sort of concerns there, and so on. So there is this ner. But underlying it all, of course, is the condition, the overall condition, and that is one of a credit bubble fueled by bank credits, the expansion of bank credit to, if you like, help people buy stocks and thereby drive their prices up. We had released earlier this Week the.

Or no, sorry, I think it was late, maybe at the weekend. The FIMRA’s margin lending figures and they’re now about 1.2 trillion. That was the October number, end October. Now bear in mind that that’s only brokers lending to their clients, margin lending. Now some of that they will have done out of their own resources. Remember that a broker can’t actually lend credit into existence. That is, you have to be a licensed bank to do that. So where a broker doesn’t do it out of his own resources, he will do it out of a bank. He will draw down on a, if you like, a client’s loan account, it’d probably be a general loan account with a banker.

But on top of that, of course you’ve got hedge funds and you’ve got, you know, the sort of very large institutions, the very large family offices, some of them will have gone to the banks in order to leverage up their positions. So the idea that there’s about 1.1 trillion, 1.2 trillion of margin debt actually only tells part of the story. A far larger amount is being loaned and we don’t see it because it’s not recorded in those FINRA statistics. And when a bank or a broker lends a customer a credit on margin, I mean it’s usually to buy about three times as much stock.

So there could be, I mean on FINRA alone, that’s about $3 trillion worth of stock. And then with the banks, I don’t know, you can probably take a guess, you probably at least double that again. So we could indeed have up to 10 trillion of stock being held on. The financial system is standing on a ledge and at the heart of it is a $10 trillion monster that almost nobody’s talking margin debt. This isn’t retail leverage or speculative froth. It’s systemic institutional grade exposure tied to derivatives, repo agreements and leveraged bond positions across major financial centers.

When the cost of money rises and liquidity dries up, this debt doesn’t just fizzle, it detonates. We’ve seen early tremors already, volatility spikes, flash crashes, liquidity gaps. These are the signals of a leveraged unwind beginning to unravel. And history tells us exactly what happens next. In 2008, it was a housing bubble wrapped in subprime loans. In 1998, it was long Term Capital Management and the cascade of margin calls that followed. But this time the leverage is bigger, it’s deeper and it’s global. The forced selling pressure from even a partial unwind could obliterate bond markets, crush equities and send central banks sprinting back to the money printer.

And while the mainstream focuses on rates and inflation targets, the real story is margin debt is about to force a fire sale across everything except physical assets. And that’s where silver enters the equation. Because when synthetic assets are dumped and real assets are hoarded, silver becomes not just a hedge, it becomes a necessity margin. Now if that’s the case, falling values, and I would include bitcoin in this, likely to trigger automatic selling if you like, as the value of collateral backing those loans diminishes. So you can see it’s quite a febrile situation. I mean, if you look at bitcoin, I mean falling from 136 down to 90 odd, I mean that’s what there’s over 25% fall and there are some very leveraged positions in that.

So you could get, if you like, an avalanche of sellers developing if that situation gets worse. Now, we don’t know for certain that this is the end of, if you like, the credit bubble because one of the things the Fed was doing, it was changing its policy from trying to control inflation to, if you like, providing liquidity in the system. And to that end it’s amount, the end of QT and the beginning of qe. So the credit machine is going to get cranked up again another notch. But whether it’s enough to save the equity market, we will, you know, we will see.

We don’t know yet. We always know these things in, in hindsight. But I think the general point is that holding stocks is getting a very, very dangerous gain. And you know, I’ve been saying some time on, on your program, you know, I would get out, get, get out of credit and get into real money, which is gold. And interestingly, once this market turns, once the bubble gets popped and stocks really start sliding, virtually everything will go with it. So if you’ve got mining shares, you’ll probably find they get quite a lot cheaper in the process. Nothing to do with gold or silver.

It’s just to do with the general distress in the market. Gold and silver. Last time this happened, we were looking at the Great Financial Crisis, 2008, 2009, gold was sold down from $1,000 down to about 680. So it then went on after that to go up to $1,920, which was a significant move once the immediate crisis had bugged. But we could have the same thing today, but I think it’s less likely because central banks are in there taking opportunity. Any stock that comes out, they will buy. So I think that the physical market, it’s unlikely to suffer the sort of problems that we saw in late 2008 and into 2009.

Mining stocks could be different though, because there are some very substantial profits there. And what people do when things start going wrong is rather than sell the things that you know, and realizing losses do is they hang onto the rubbish that they’re making losses on and sell the good stuff, which will be mines, of course. So I think we could be in for a period of enormous volatility and I think it’s important to understand why that volatility is there and then you can probably navigate your way through it. Just before we get going, we just launched the official Silver News Daily Telegram.

To kick things off, we’re running a 10 ounce silver giveaway. Yes, real physical silver, not a voucher, not digital credits, actual bullion. This telegram will be our new home for real time silver discussions, market insights, collection picks and everything precious metals. It’s where the community truly comes alive. Here’s how to enter the 10 ounce silver giveaway. Be subscribed to Silver News Daily on YouTube. Turn on the notification bell, comment 10 ounce giveaway on three separate videos. Be an active member of the Telegram group and say hi. Once we hit 500 Active Telegram members, we’ll pick one lucky winner to receive 10 ounces of silver shipped directly to you.

So get in early, stay active. As the dollar based system begins to fracture under the weight of its own leverage, the global balance of power is shifting and fast. Enter the BRICS nations. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These economic heavyweights have spent the last decade preparing for exactly this moment. And now they’re making their move. Their weapon, A gold backed trade settlement system that threatens to rip the foundation out from under the dollar. With over 40 countries lining up to join, the BRICS alliance isn’t just rejecting the dollar, it’s building its replacement. One that’s anchored in tangible value, not debt based promises.

And while gold takes center stage in this reset, silver isn’t far behind. In fact, silver may be the stealth beneficiary of this entire monetary shift. Why? Because every time the world has returned to sound money, silver has played a crucial role. Not just as a monetary metal, but as a key component of trade, technology and trust. And as confidence in fiat evaporates, silver becomes the bridge between collapsing currencies and a new asset backed world. The BRICS move isn’t just about geopolitics. It’s About a once in a century change in what the world considers money and silver is about to be reintroduced to the spotlight.

It does make a huge difference because the central banks undoubtedly will be in there buying any physical gold that comes on offer. And I think the answer is there won’t be any coming on offer. It’ll all be in the paper markets. That’s where the volatility will be, if you like. But interestingly, if you look at the open interest in Comex at the moment, just to take futures market, it’s sort of not that high. I mean it’s sort of average to slightly less than average. Which suggests that the amount of speculation, the amount of momentum trading, speculative trading, so on and so forth in the futures market is actually not all that great.

So, you know, the idea that they could sort of maybe bash it down and rarely shake the trees as it were, get out to all the loose holders, that doesn’t really apply in this situation. So it is a fundamentally different situation. And of course the other thing is that I think this is a topic you might like to follow up on. You know, China is definitely making a move to make gold exchangeable for yuan by opening vaults outside China. SGE vaults are being opened in Hong Kong and also in Saudi Arabia and there will be facilities in other Southeast Asian nations.

So the whole of the BRICS cohort, as it were, will be looking at a situation where for trade purposes anyway, the yuan and gold will be exchangeable and presumably at some stage in the future there will be a fixed exchange rate. So, you know, if you’re an African central bank, it does make sense that you’ve got to start accumulating a bit of gold. You know, if you’ve got mines in your territory which produce it, you’ll hang onto it, which will leave the market short. If on the other hand you haven’t, then you’ve got to go into the market and try and get some.

So I can see that central bank demand for gold is probably going to accelerate. And the other side of it is that following the debacle earlier this year when the bank of England had a rush on its vaulted stocks, I think the central banks who saw their lease gold walking out of the door will think, I don’t think we really want to do this in future. So I think you’ll find that gold leases which are essential for the liquidity of the forward market in London, I think the availability of those leases is going to diminish. I suspect it’s already diminishing and I think that the bullion banks are already aware of this, which is why they’re quite happy to talk the price of gold up now, just as the major banks are.

You get Morgan Stanley and so on now openly talking about higher gold prices and talking about, well, you should have 20% in gold, I think in the case of Morgan Stanley. So things have changed hugely. But it’s just that, you know, when the empty bubble pops, there’s going to be a lot of widespread fallout in, you know, in all sorts of different things which are not directly related. With margin debt already cracking the system and the BRICS nations dismantling dollar supremacy, the Federal Reserve has reached a breaking point. Quietly, yet undeniably, they’ve flipped the switch. QT is out, QE is back.

On December 1, the Fed halted its quantitative tightening and initiated fresh bond buying under the banner of ample liquidity, a euphemism for full blown money printing. But this isn’t stimulus, it’s triage. They’re not supporting growth, they’re trying to keep the corpse of the financial system from flatlining. And every dollar they create to paper over the cracks only accelerates the decline of the dollar itself. Inflation may no longer be front page news, but the underlying debasement is getting worse, not better. Treasury yields are flashing red, unemployment is rising. And with a divided Congress and growing fiscal dysfunction, the Fed is cornered, forced to monetize more and more government debt just to avoid systemic collapse.

For silver, this is rocket fuel. As a non yielding finite and trust based asset, silver thrives in environments where paper money is being sacrificed to prop up confidence. The market sees it, the smart money knows it, and the fuse has already been lit. I think, I mean the background to it is that as I said just a moment ago, the bank of China is now extending facilities outside China whereby yuan can be exchanged for gold. That’s the whole point about the new SGE vaults which are being opened outside China. I mean they are exclusively for the exchange of gold for yuan and vice versa.

So that I think is a very clear signal that in the future trade settlement on a national basis, if you like, international, between nations, will be on a yuan which is tied to gold. And it looks to me as if it’s going to be like a modification, a modified version of Bretton woods where Chinese nationals, or indeed nationals in a brick nation can’t go along to a bank and say I want to change these yuan for gold or whatever at the exchange rate. I think it will be just available at the international level between nations. That’s the whole thing, it’ll be for trade settlement.

I mean, that is absolutely clear. You know, if you can’t see it then, you know, wake up for goodness sake. It’s all there in front of us. But what it does mean is that all the members of brics, you know, who on the one hand are terrified of, you know, having their dollar loans called in by the Americans or regime change forced upon them. I mean they’ve, you know, this has been the, the history, if you like, of American imperialism. You know, they’re really quite careful in what they’re doing. Walking a bit of a tightrope on this one, but they can see which way this is going.

And it does encourage them, I think, to get trade settlement arrangements in place, hence signing up for the Chinese exchange rate settlement system. You know, they’ve rather got to do that and I think very, very quietly they’re doing it and very quietly they’re looking to beef up their gold reserves as well because they will need them in this new world. I mean, what we’re looking at is a post fiat currency world. It’s not just me who’s been saying it, it’s I think some of the smarter heads, if you like, in central banks, they know what’s going on, they may not be able to do anything about it and they also follow policies which they know to be wrong.

But these guys aren’t stupid. They understand the difference between money and credit. And consequently they’re going to protect themselves against a complete collapse of the fiat currency system, which is what we are moving towards. And you can see how that’s going to happen too. Because when this equity bullet, if you like, the financial. The silver shortage story isn’t a prediction anymore, it’s a present day reality and it’s intensifying by the month. For the fifth year in a row, the global silver market is running a deficit. And this time the gap is projected to hit a staggering 149 million ounces.

That’s not a rounding error, that’s structural imbalance. Mining output is struggling to keep pace with only modest gains despite record demand. Why? Because over 70% of silver is produced as a byproduct of other metals like copper, lead and zinc. Meaning miners can’t just ramp up production to meet silver demand. It’s locked behind industrial supply chains and ore quality constraints. At the same time, recycling has hit a 12 year high. But even that can’t close the gap. Meanwhile, demand isn’t just coming from investors, it’s coming from governments, tech and clean energy Sectors that can’t afford to run out.

And when physical demand outpaces supply year after year, something has to give. What we’re seeing now is the market pushing premiums higher and draining vaults just to meet delivery needs. And when the day comes that those vaults are empty or the price suppression breaks, silver won’t climb slowly, it will gap higher in a move that makes past rallies look tame. This isn’t just bullish, it’s explosive asset bubble pops. And this is particularly the case in America. Then you’re going to get a collapsing stock market. You’re going to get collateral problems which I’ve just described through all the margin loans being foreclosed on and all the rest of it, which will increase the selling into a falling market.

And at the same time, you’re going to see businesses faced with higher refinancing costs, banks reluctant to lend anything into the private sector. So this is going to, if you like, hit the non financial private sector very, very hard in terms of cash flows and all the rest of it. Consequently, we go into a slump. Now what does the US Government do under those circumstances? Well, the answer is quite simple. It stands there to rescue everything and to stop a slump happening and indeed, if possible, to stop even the stock market sliding. How do they do that? By debasing the currency.

They debase the currency. Not by suddenly announcing a new rate of exchange for gold. What they do is they just print, print, print and they’re already doing this. This is the whole point about the Fed changing tack from worrying about inflation to saying, okay, stop QT start qe. Interest rates are secondary. But the point is we’ve got to get liquidity into the system to stop it falling over. That was what the Fed was doing. I mean, it was a very clear signal to all of us where the priorities now lie. I mean, one of the things that’s been sort of undermining sentiment in the market a bit is we were absolutely certain that we were going to get another cut in the Fed funds rate in December.

Now it’s 50 50. So you can see that there are doubts creeping in if you like. But the interest rate scene isn’t so important. What really matters is what the bond yields do. And what the bond yields will do is they will start discounting the growing certainty that there’s another round of dollar debasement about to occur. I mean, when you get dollar debasement, What sort of level are you going to demand in terms of return to part with your dollars, say on a 10 year basis? Is 4.5% enough? Probably not. That’s the problem. You’re going to have rising borrowing costs against an economy which is suffering from the fallout of, if you like, an equity bubble implosion.

And it’ll destroy the currency. It is as simple as that. The October silver squeeze was the loudest signal yet that the paper markets can’t contain the physical demand any longer. In London, lease rates surged to an eye watering 34.9%, a panic level signal that metal was vanishing from vaults. Over a thousand tons poured in from the US and China to calm the storm, but the damage was already done. Premiums spiked, the spot price hit $54.47 and the COMEX was left exposed open. Interest on silver futures remains below historical averages, which might sound stable, but in reality it means one low liquidity and high vulnerability.

ETFs meanwhile, absorbed 95 million ounces in just the first half of 2025. That’s institutional buying pressure stacking up against a shrinking supply base. And here’s where it gets dangerous. When the price of paper silver disconnects from the physical market, the entire pricing mechanism becomes unstable. A disorderly short squeeze is no longer a fringe theory. It’s now the most likely outcome if trust and deliverability breaks. And when that happens, there’s no telling how fast or how far silver can run. The setup is primed, the pressure is building and the exit doors are narrowing by the day. Well, I mean, the problem with that is that it’s anecdotal and so we can’t really put a finger on it.

But to understand how it works, each bank will have a file on its counterparties within the interbank market and it will set a limit. So you’ll find that Morgan Stanley will have a huge great library, if you like, of every bank that they deal with in the interbank market. So they will say, you know, regional bank. They will say, well, within the interbank market, we’re happy to enter into commitment to provide them with credit up due $10 million. Saying now that was the way in which it always worked in the past. So, you know, each bank has got different things.

Now what you’re referring to, I think, is a situation where in this case, say J.P. morgan decides, oh, we’ve had a look at their business, their accounts and so on and so forth, we’ve got to cut that back to $2 million. So we’re going from 10 to 2. So that is sort of bad news, as it were. And it’s desperately important that regional banks actually retain their relationships within the interbank market and don’t threaten. So that’s one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is things have evolved quite a bit since I was involved with the interbank market.

You now have repos. I mean, I was dealing before repos were invented in the UK anyway, because they only came in in 1992. 93. But the thing about repos is of course it is secured. The whole point about a repo is that you part with credit. Alistair MacLeod has been warning about this moment for years. But even his latest forecast is leaving seasoned investors speechless. A silver price surge to $1,500 and beyond. It sounds outrageous at first glance, until you realize the math behind it isn’t fantasy, it’s arithmetic. At the core of his thesis is the collapse of trust in fiat currencies and the return to sound money.

Principles led by a revaluation of gold and by extension silver. Macleod argues that as the BRICs shift toward a gold backed system, central banks worldwide will be forced to recalibrate their reserves. With gold moving to $10,000 or higher in a global repricing event. Silver trading at a 70:1 ratio today would logically follow to triple digit territory. But MacLeod doesn’t stop there. He points to silver’s dual role as both a monetary and industrial metal, one that is increasingly indispensable in a green economy, but priced as if it were abundant and irrelevant in a system reset. Silver’s suppressed price doesn’t just rebound, it overshoots.

And in a world drowning in debt, faith will flow to real assets like never before. McLeod’s $1,500 silver isn’t just a shock number. It’s the logical outcome of a global financial reckoning already in motion in return for collateral. And the terms of the repo are that it’s reversed on a certain day in the future. You know, it might be overnight, it might be two weeks time, whatever. So yeah, when you get tightening of credit in the market, then you find that various rates, if you like, that are associated with this lending start rising. But this principally is what the Fed is trying to do.

This is why it has decided that, okay, inflation is a problem, but we’ve got a greater one looming in the financial markets due to lack of liquidity. Now most of this lack of liquidity is down to two things. Firstly, quantitative tightening. It takes credit out of the market, takes it out of circulation and effectively extinguishes it because it’s no longer there. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that the US treasury has been acting sort of independently really from the Fed in terms of taking liquidity out to the markets. What it has been doing is it’s been issuing T bills at pace, and because the government has shut down, it’s just been accumulating on the general account, which admittedly is with the Fed.

But what it’s been doing, if you like, is it has been taking credit out of circulation and not spending it into the economy. So you can see the whole thing tightens up. So the Fed had no option at all but to deal with this liquidity issue. And that basically is where we are at the moment. The reverberations of that we’re seeing at the moment with a lot of uncertainty in the market, because without the lifeblood of continuing credit expansion aimed at supporting financial assets, the purchasing of financial assets, then the market crashes. So you can see how sensitive all this, everything we’ve just covered points to one inescapable the collapse isn’t coming.

It’s already here. Margin debt is unraveling the system from within. The BRICS alliance is dismantling the dollar from without. The Fed has lost control. And silver? It’s no longer a question of if, it’s when. When the next wave of forced selling hits, when fiat confidence breaks, when physical supply runs out, silver will be the lifeboat the world scrambles to board. The mainstream is still asleep, but the vaults are draining. The policy response is baked in, and the biggest wealth transfer in modern history is already underway. If MacLeod is right and this ends in a return to sound money, then silver at fifteen hundred dollars isn’t extreme, it’s inevitable.

Don’t wait for the headlines. Don’t wait for permission. Because once silver breaks free, there won’t be a second chance to act early. Subscribe if you want to stay ahead of the curve. And remember, this is not financial advice. Speak to a professional before making any investment decisions.
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