SilverNews doesn’t lead with a chart; it leads with a crime scene. Today’s headline: “Cat’s Out of the Bag”—the punchline being the bag was made of paper, just like COMEX’s silver.
Fact 1:
$78.12 IS NOT THE PRICE OF SILVER
AGAIN, THIS IS NOT THE PRICE OF SILVER AS OF JANUARY 1, 2026 When China stopped playing or cooperating with the “globalist silver price” game.
subtext: Recall China did not start the Trade War
Fact 2
China’s SHFE Silver February 2026 contract (AG2602) is now at $90 USD/Troy Ounce equivalent and it is breaking out.
sourced by Eric Yeung
Fact 3: The Difference between $78 and $90 (Shanghai premium)
A Whopping 14%
COMEX and LBMA are now reduced to a fiction layered over a market they no longer control, fronting a “global” silver price that China just walked away from in broad daylight. Washington’s protectionist turn under Trump, sold as a way to “win” economic wars, has instead accelerated the collapse of Western paper pricing power and handed real price discovery to Shanghai.
Two prices, one metal
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COMEX Feb ’26 silver sits around $78– $79 dollars an ounce, still marketed as the world’s benchmark price. So please, I beg of you, don’t sell to any bullion dealers because dealers will use this phony price (and weaker hands often think they are timing a top when this silver bull market is just beginning)
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Stay tough and recall the current price of silver is now $90
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China’s SHFE February 2026 silver contract AG2602 is trading near the $90-dollar equivalent and breaking out, with the exchange widening daily price limits to cope with violent upside volatility.
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That $78 (paper) to $90 (physical silver) spread is roughly a 14 percent Shanghai premium, a live, quantifiable signal that the “global” paper price is no longer global and no longer in charge.
Two screens.
Two systems.
One shortage-driven reality.
Paper still pretends; physical is already repricing.
How London broke the market
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London’s bullion system deliberately shifted gold and silver into unallocated, book‑entry “ownership” from 1987 onward, enabling unlimited contract creation with minimal metal and muting the monetary warning signal that rising prices used to send on loose policy and debt bubbles.
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More than 90 percent of wholesale precious‑metal activity now clears as unallocated Loco London claims, not bars, turning the LBMA into a leveraged credit system masquerading as a market.
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That structure works only when physical is abundant and credulous capital keeps rolling; under structural deficit and export controls, it fails in real time as bids for actual metal migrate to venues that require delivery.
Economic war and blowback
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Trump’s tariff‑driven economic wars and widening use of financial sanctions pushed rivals to weaponize what they still control: energy, commodities, trade routes—and now silver exports and refining flows.
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China’s tightening of silver export rules and its willingness to pay large domestic premiums signal that it is no longer subsidizing Western paper benchmarks with cheap, shipped metal.
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Protectionism does not “win” in a world where your adversary sits on the marginal ounces; it just exposes your dependence on imported metal and your banks’ overextended short books.
Loss of control & disastrous consequences
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As Shanghai and other Eastern hubs pay steadily higher prices for real silver, arbitrage that used to drag London and COMEX up is failing because there is not enough free metal and because political risk now attaches to moving it.
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Analysts already warn that persistent deficits and tight inventories could drive silver into triple digits globally, echoing the 1970s run when gold and silver surged manyfold before interest rates were forced into the teens to stop the stampede out of bonds.
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With global debt around the 300‑trillion mark and U.S. federal interest costs already in the trillions annually, rising rates triggered by honest metal prices threaten the very funding model of the American empire.
The paper bag is tearing
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COMEX and LBMA can still print contracts, hike margins, and massage optics, but they cannot conjure refining capacity, export waivers, or fresh ore bodies on a spreadsheet.
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A benchmark that clears “silver” at $78 while real-world buyers line up and pay $90 in Shanghai, more still in other hubs, has ceased to be a benchmark and become a propaganda feed.
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The silver cat is out of the bag, and no stack of unallocated promises from London or New York is ever putting it back into a paper sack again.
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not financial advice