When Banks Crack, Gold Runs.

From bank runs to gold rushes, the global flight from paper promises has begun.

You don’t need a financial crisis for the system to fail.

You just need enough cracks for confidence to disappear.

This week, those cracks are showing, from rising bad loans in U.S. regional banks to scenes of gold-buying frenzies across Sydney and Saigon. The symptoms are different, but the diagnosis is the same: trust in the system is thinning.

A client …