Daily Dispatches

By Konstantine Panegyres
LiveScience.com, New York
Sunday, January 18, 2026

"All I want is an income of 20,000 sesterces from secure investments," proclaims a character in a poem by Juvenal (first to second century A.D.), the Roman poet.

Today 20,000 sesterces would be equivalent to about [Australian] $300,000 in interest from investments. Anyone would be very happy with this much passive annual income.

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By Clive Maund
CliveMaund.com
Friday, January 16, 2026

With a massive metals bull market in full swing, it's always worth us stepping back from time to time to review the big picture. 

The background to all this is of course the accelerating collapse of the current fiat money system in the face of hopeless, intractable mountains of debt with the "can kicking" enabled by derivatives, etc., coming to the end of the road as the amounts of new money required to just maintain the status quo accelerate into the infinite. 

By Leslie Hook
Financial Times, London
Friday, January 16, 2026

At Dillon Gage, a refinery in Texas, workers are toiling round the clock to melt down jewelry, dining sets, and even old dental fillings, but it is still struggling to keep pace with customers' rush to sell the family silver.

"We are running three shifts, seven days a week," says president Terry Hanlon. "We can’t keep up."

By Richard Partington
The Guardian, London
Friday, January 16, 2026

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, the call came for Serbia's central bank governor: Millions of dollars' worth of gold bars, destined for a high-security Belgrade vault, had been left on the runway of a Swiss airport.

In air freight -- despite the extraordinary value of bullion -- fresh flowers, food, and other perishables still take priority. "We learned this the hard way," Jorgovanka Tabakovic told a conference late last year.

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