Investors around the world are clamoring for things—real things—and for things that make things, and for things that can be used to buy those things. But unfortunately for the West, it doesn’t have those things. We've made no effort to get those things, and we may soon find that all the dollars and euros we’ve created will be unable to obtain those things for us in any meaningful quantities. In the U.S., government debt levels are so high that it's difficult for Congress to agree to any significant spending. And without government involvement, the kinds of projects large enough to move the needle just aren't going to get done.

If the above sounds deliberately unclear, our charts may bring clarity. The first is dramatic, but no more so than what's happening today in the world. It compares the performance of two gold stocks with that two of Europe’s largest banks.

The two gold stocks are Newmont Mining (NEM), the only gold stock in the S&P 500 (telling in itself), and Barrick Gold (ABX), the world’s largest gold miner and a member of TCI’s Growth Portfolio. Since the beginning of the year both stocks have more than doubled. Barrick at its recent high was three times its start-of-year price. Newmont is S&P’s top performer this year.

The banks are HSBC, which is down sharply, and Germany’s fabled Deutsche Bank, which has dropped 50 percent since the new year dawned and currently trades within striking distance of its 2009 low.

You might say the banks are all dressed up but will not venture out for fear the dress will quickly become unraveled. Perhaps the most incredible statistic—and I mean of any number I’ve ever seen in my entire life—is the more than $70 per share that DB has in free cash flow. Hard to believe, yes, but there it is on any Bloomberg terminal. And before you get too complacent, realize that J.P. Morgan, America’s biggest bank and widely regarded as one of our best, boasts nearly $20 per share in free cash flow.

It would take a book (and we are sure many will be written in years to come) to explain, but for two reasons the cash holdings stand out.

First, much of the money on the books of banks amounts to funny money. Indeed, it is hard to find any money that is not at least a little funny. Just a few weeks ago British Gilts were rated AAA, making them among the seemingly safest assets in a world in which AAA ratings for corporations and countries can probably be counted on your fingers. Well, now you need one less finger.

Second, no one wants to borrow. Here in the West, everyone has a distinct reluctance to invest in things—reflecting lack of opportunity, risks that we can’t easily quantify, and projects whose payoff is too far down the road. The upshot: few invest and almost no one invests in real things like bridges, pipes, roads, and new industries.

Of course the story with banks goes hand in hand with current bond market happenings. Overall, some $8 trillion of sovereign bonds sports a negative yield. German 10-year bonds currently yield negative 0.17 percent. The most glaring implication: investors won’t borrow even if you pay them to invest.

Trying to cure this malady by printing ever more money equates with the proverbial gasoline on the fire. But for investors, at least, not all is doom and gloom, at least not yet. Our second chart shows how various assets have performed since the beginning of the year relative to the dollar.

No, your eyes do not deceive you: the Brazilian real has notched a 20 percent gain since the beginning of the year, while the Russian ruble has advanced 15 percent. The currencies of nearly all commodity-producing countries ignore the malaise in the West and have staged major rallies.

It’s further proof of how desperate investors are to own calls on things that can result in new industries such as the mining of rare earths, in the creation of infrastructure, in the mining of copper and aluminum, both so essential to creating a 21st century grid, and of silver, needed for renewable energies.

The problem is that all these things, unlike dollars and euros and pounds, are scarce. When you want to buy them, you need a currency whose intrinsic value matches the value of the things you want to buy. That explains why gold and silver have been such strong performers. Gold is the closest you get to a universal currency, while silver, besides its monetary characteristics, also itself functions as a usable thing, essential to solar energies.

So what should investors do? The biggest gains so far this year have been gold and silver stocks—our first chart did not exaggerate the situation. And even with the recent spurt in stock prices, most commodity indexes are outperforming stocks. One reason: while the West shuns things, the East’s maintains a voracious appetite for them. China has been importing records amounts of everything from iron ore to oil. It may not need that huge stash for itself, but as it positions itself to be at the center of building out the Eastern part of the world, the long-term future of things is more than assured. Though it may seem hard to believe, a few years down the road, barring a collapse worse than the 2008 bust, things, at least many of them, will be in short supply.