As gold and silver catch fire, what's happening?

Ordinarily it would seem that circumstances are hugely favorable to gold and silver. But if governments lose on the market-rigging front, they can always become more openly totalitarian -- confiscating gold or outlawing private possession of monetary gold, imposing windfall profits taxes on capital gains in gold, raising royalty requirements on gold-mining companies to prohibitive levels, and so forth. So even as we all may hope for the best -- free and transparent markets, and limited and accountable government -- your secretary/treasurer's only prediction is borrowed from Orwell's "1984": "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever." To prevent that is another reason to press on in the morning.