Recent months have provided watershed moments for so-called conspiracy theory nuts to be proved correct over and over again.
We’ve learned that the justice system can and has been weaponized against political opponents (Republicans), that the whole propaganda network of governments and LameStream media spewed misinformation regarding COVID (both origins and measures to combat its spread), that USAID type operations have been funneling tax dollars to absurd, almost exclusively left-wing projects and, that Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie are, indeed, a gay couple.
Dare we dream that the lid is about to be torn off silver manipulation?
An excellent story about the capping of silver prices ran today on zerohedge.com.
Why should you care? Begin with caring because illegal manipulations of markets is not what this country is supposed to be about. And it begs the question of what else they are manipulating.
For context, silver traded as high as $50 an ounce early in 1980 and again challenged that mark in 2011. Note, there is a silver spot price and various contract month prices, so exact figures are a matter of choice.
But, it remains a fact that silver is one of the most useful metals, which ticks the boxes of being a precious metal, money, as well as incredibly useful in various industries such as electronics, solar power and medicine.
Yet, as I write this at midday on Thursday March 27, 2025, more than 45 years after silver first traded near $50 an ounce, silver’s current price is $34.32 on the spot market, up 72 cents on the trading day.
You tell me a similarly useful item trading at less than 70 percent of its price four and one-half decades back.
As another yardstick to measure silver’s suppression, gold now trades above $3,000 an ounce, up from about $800 an ounce in 1980 or $1,900 an ounce in 2011.
Silver price suppression is not just some crazy theory. As the zerohedge story that was referenced above notes, there have been incidences of traders for major banks being convicted of manipulating the silver price. There are even more examples than those mentioned in the story.
As someone who monitors this closely, I can tell you I have been taking profits expecting yet another silver beatdown. The plan is to buy back when the hit comes.
That thinking has not changed, even though price is up today. Friday or Monday would be opportune times to hit the price at the end of a trading quarter. Or April 2, when the Trump tariffs become official, is another possibility.
There are many reasons the government might want to allow the price of silver to be kept down, including reports that there are 500 ounces of silver in each cruise missile. That silver is not being recycled.
Also, rising gold and silver prices serve to remind consumers of continuing inflation.
From the cellphone you no doubt have surgically attached to your hand, to the electronics throughout your house, to solar panels, to high-tech batteries, to antibacterial applications in medicine, to electric cars, silver is useful in many applications.
Yet an estimated 70 to 80 percent of silver is mined as a by-product of acquiring copper, lead or zinc, so silver has no strong lobby. These miners see silver as a bonus to be added onto the profits from their main product.
Here’s where it could get interesting. The Hunt brothers helped fuel that silver rise to $50 in 1980 by buying physical metal and large amounts of futures contracts as a hedge against the high inflation of the time. Inflation back then was running at an annual rate in the low teens according to government figures that many thought understated actual price inflation for the consumer.
At the time, silver was a key to photographic film, so companies such as Kodak were not amused.
Rules were changed to combat the Hunts. The number of contracts per individual was reduced. When that didn’t work, the commodities exchanges, in effect, would not create new futures contracts and only allowed the closing (selling) of existing contracts.
This put considerable pressure on the price and the highly leveraged Hunts barely escaped bankruptcy. Think of the movie “Trading Places.”
To this day, silver remains a relatively small market in terms of overall cash value of available product. Someone such as Elon Musk, with a net worth on the far side of $300 billion as per Forbes magazine, certainly could just start buying and keep accumulating.
Musk’s interest would be acquiring metal critical to his many ventures, including electric cars, rockets and robots. If that would happen, $50 an ounce would be a mere waystation to a high in the hundreds of dollars per ounce.
Although I would hesitate to offer investment advice to Musk, he could quickly get back some of the damage to his net worth from the attack on Tesla stock.
Maybe I’d make a buck or two along with him. A win-win, you might say.
If I make enough, I might even buy a Tesla car. Probably not.
Sam Ross Jr's site 