Now before we get into it, did you happen to notice that S&P/Experian’s consumer credit compilation just recorded its highest pace of credit card defaults since July 2012, indeed up for the fourth straight month? And note how it is coincident with the Fed having raised rates? You heard it first foretold here so many months ago. Good to have some Gold given the great unraveling?

Specific to the week just past for you Silver sharpies out there: what happened on Wednesday at precisely 04:30:38 Pacific (07:30:38 Eastern, 13:30:38 GMT)? “Silver hit 17.”

Silver — after having been entirely entrapped within the 16s for 50 full consecutive trading days (from February 5 through April 17) — saw someone gut it up on Wednesday to hit the offer at 17 and within three hours price had moved to as high as 17.265, indeed reaching up to 17.360 on Thursday, before settling out the week yesterday (Friday) at 17.115. That’s the good news.

Now for the Not As Good News. Silver’s upside kick wasn’t due a lick to its comparative undervaluation with Gold. Silver instead was taken for a joy-ride by Copper along with his back alley buddies iron ore, nickel, aluminum, and every fraud’s Gold-bar-filler-favorite, tungsten. Not a very impressive binge, that. Blame it all on talk of $100 Oil? (Thank goodness for stateside energy independence, so they say).

Either way, Silver’s having gained 2.8% for the week combined with Gold’s having lost 0.8% was enough to finally send the Gold/Silver ratio sub-80 to 78.2x. But given Oil’s having finished out the week with two daily declines such as to look technically-toppy near-term, should the industrial metals gang recede from their recent ride, one ought expect Silver, too, to slide, only to again find itself inside … the 16s. Instead, it would be helpful for Gold to get off the schneid. Still, at least to visually memorialize Silver’s enthusiastically having broken above 17, here’s its percentage track over the past 21 trading days (one month) versus that of snoozing Gold: