We’ve talked about the “wartime behavior” of metals prices, more specifically the historical signal of the gold/silver ratio.
That signal is being articulated (put to words) at the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week.
Here’s the developing story that’s fitting the price.
It started with Macron (France).
Macron said there’s a shift towards a “world without rules,” a “world without effective governance,” and where cooperation is giving way to “relentless competition.”
His answer was strategic mobilization: more economic sovereignty, protection (not “naïve openness”), and heavy investment in AI, defense, and critical inputs.
Then came Carney (Canada), and he made the same case, but more explicit.
Carney told Davos we’re “in the middle of a rupture, not a transition.”
He said for decades, countries pretended the rules-based order worked as advertised. Now it’s breaking, because economic integration itself has become a weapon (and has led to Canadian subordination).
He said “we live in an era of great power rivalry.” And he referenced a phrase from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, that suggests the world has returned to the “natural logic of international relations is reasserting itself.” That logic: “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
In this new era, if you aren’t strong enough to defend yourself or part of a powerful group, as Carney says, you will be “on the menu.”
So, for the better part of the past decade, we’ve heard the incessant call for “cooperation and coordination” from the global leadership at the World Economic Forum, all designed around a multi-trillion dollar climate agenda (“decarbonizing”).
Now, it’s about fragmentation, sovereignty and self-reliance. And it’s about a world that needs to pursue all energy sources to power AI.
This is clear regime change: re-arming, re-building, re-shoring. Resilience over reliance. Sovereignty over dependence. Energy abundance over energy purity.