But the real wild card remains silver, which is in a permanent structural supply/demand deficit situation from which I see no escape. Even if 'da boyz' allowed silver's price to rise to the whatever 3-digit price it ends up at, all it will do is drive world-wide investment demand to the outer edges of the galaxy...exacerbating the situation.
And no matter what the price, it will continue to come out of the ground at the rate of around 820 million ounces a year...