By Jo Nova
History books will be written about this week. “This is not good” says Elon Musk.
This week the world woke up to realize that silver is a critical mineral for the high tech, AI, solar panels, and renewables. In four days time, China, which supplies more than half of the processed silver on Earth, effectively blocks their exports of silver.
Meanwhile it turns out JP Morgan, which has been aggressively shorting the silver market for 15 years — was accumulating it all along. The entire COMEX silver market in New York has 30 million ounces of silver that is ‘immediately deliverable’. But JP Morgan is widely reported to control or custody up to ~700–800 million ounces of silver across vaulting, ETFs and proprietary holdings. It is de facto, the US strategic reserve, but controlled by a private bank, not by the Treasury.
The phase change is in progress. I’m not trying to cover all the details, just to let people know that something very big is unfolding.
The largest single use of silver has become “industrial applications”:
Silver, it turns out, is the best electrical and thermal conductor of all the elements. It is essential to the solar panel industry, EV’s, and data centres. And for the last five years the demand from the tech giants and renewable industry has been so great the global silver miners have not been able to keep with demand. The cumulative deficit in silver production since 2020 is 1.1 billion ounces. That’s a lot of silver that has been pulled from physical stores and sent to industrial buyers.
When Elon Musk says “it’s not good” he is thinking of the silver his factories need. Without enough supply, production lines will grind to a halt. Current EV’s use about twice as much silver as a petrol and diesel car (25-50 grams per car.) But the demand is only going to rise. The new Samsung sold state battery is rumored to need hundreds of grams, or even 1 kilogram of silver in every battery. It’s only a prototype, but supposedly charges in nine minutes and has a range of 900km (600 miles). You know they will want silver…
And even if the price of silver rises substantially, it’s still a small part of the whole cost of an EV, therefore the factories are going to pay the new higher prices. Anything is better than shutting down…
It is possible to substitute other metals for silver, but the losses are significant. Copper oxidizes badly, and has higher resistance.
Meanwhile, inconveniently, China announced two months ago that export licenses will be required for silver in 2026 (this is the same treatment they have done with rare earths). So technically, the CCP can say they haven’t banned anything, but the new rules just happen to restrict supply leaving the country from January 1 (Friday). The Export licenses are just “sanctions by paperwork”. Hence many industrial players are just starting to realize their supply lines are suddenly at risk.
There is a big silver shortage, which may bring down some bankers, the ones left holding the short contracts on silver… At the very least, the money printers will have to work hard.
The most calculated trade in inside trading
The Asian Guy in the videos below, is telling (or selling) a story. Strangely, his YouTube channel only started three weeks ago, yet his reports on silver have been so detailed and prescient he has gathered 43,000 subscribers. He appears to be pure AI, and, we should keep in mind that he may even be a product of the JP Morgan marketing team. Who knows? He almost seems to know too much.
Title: JP Morgan Flips LONG + China Ban Starts In 4 Days
WARNING: There are many copies and imitators and ambush spam videos acting as decoys. The original is OG Jon AG. Also on X: OGJohnAG and the backup channel is here. The transcript of this video (now made private) is here.
..
The Asian Guy describes himself as a silver bug, and talks the talk of the long suffering silver nerd, and yet, in the end, we have to ask why he is suddenly making these videos and “who benefits” from them. Obviously JP Morgan comes out looking very powerful, (albeit, also rather predatory. They told everyone not to buy silver while they bought it themselves).
The Asian Guy is effectively telling Elon Musk he has been out-gamed by JP Morgan and he will need to knock at their door and wait for them to set the price. Presumably they don’t want him to buy up Mexican silver mines…
In this video (below) made a few days ago, The Asian Guy claims last Friday, one banker must have gone to the US Federal Reserve to beg for $17 billion in Repos (Repurchase agreements) to keep them alive in the disastrous silver shorts gamble. A repo is a loan of last resort. If it’s true, it suggests things are getting very close to the wire for some traders.
It also confirms that the US central powers are willing to inflate their way out of trouble.
The Blob bureaucracy depends on fiat currencies
If the Blob can print money — they can keep giving away other people’s purchasing power in order to buy votes. The game is up though, if the voters realize what is going on and abandon the dollar in favor of something else, like gold or silver.
Because the Blob bankers can always print more money, they have created vast numbers of layers of derivatives, options and hedge contracts. Astonishingly, the ratio of “paper silver” to real silver is estimated to be over 100 to one, or much higher. What’s changing is that people are demanding the physical silver, not just another paper contract. They can’t make solar panels or EVs with paper silver. But once people realize there isn’t enough silver, everything falls apart just like a bank run, and panic sets in.
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PS: My other half, Dr David Evans and I own Goldnerds. We’ve been watching the precious metals market for 30 years, and waiting for the house of cards to come undone (as have many skeptics). Obviously anything I write here is not market advice, just posted for information…
John Adams has in the past suggested that silver should be about AUD$600/ ounce If not for the market manipulation
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Silver going to 1/10 the gold price.
Meanwhile Victoria is now hurtling to bankruptcy. April 2026 and the music stops.
As we get closer our position is fully revealed. No way out. God could not save us.
Various government financed “corporations” are screaming for loan commitments.
The money is there if the state government will back yet another loan from C-Bus, UniSuper etc. How else can also-ran management get paid A$800k/annum?
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Silver Ripping Faces The F**k Off
Silver didn’t merely rally — it ripped higher in a way that perfectly wrapped up a year where the precious-metals markets have done nothing but confirm what some of us have been warning about for a very long time: the global financial system is fundamentally broken, monetary policy is a farce, and the theoretical scaffolding holding modern finance together is rotting at the seams. I’ve been yammering about this for the better part of 7 years now.
As Zero Hedge deduced on Friday, Silver’s explosive move was the result of a rare convergence of macro forces, market flows, and physical constraints all hitting at once: falling U.S. real yields and growing expectations for Fed cuts pulled investors back into precious metals just as central banks’ relentless gold buying encouraged rotation into silver. At the same time new demand from corporate treasuries and stablecoin firms broadened the buyer base further, silver’s already thin market was made even tighter by mining disruptions and deteriorating ore grades, and rising gold prices pushed retail jewelry buyers to trade down into silver, shrinking available supply.
Silver Trades $80, China Takes Cover, And LBMA Worsens
Silver’s advance is being mischaracterized as another speculative cycle. The more important signal is not the magnitude of the move, but where stress is emerging. Regional price dislocations, product failures, and abnormal behavior in London’s bullion plumbing all point to a market struggling to intermediate physical demand.
What follows is a convergence. China’s futures premiums, official signaling against hoarding, distortions in a major silver ETF, and widening stress in London’s inter-dealer market are all expressions of the same underlying constraint.
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If the world wakes up tomorrow and realizes that trying to make solar, wind and EVs work is pointless, the reduced demand for silver could drop prices just as fast as they’re rising now. Certainly if silver is that critical to the climate control consortium, the price of “renewable” conversion will also explode which might actually cause many to rethink the wisdom of such investments.
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Is this shades of [IIRC] Nelson Bunker Hunt in the 1970s.
Awful squeeze on silver, but – then, when ‘use’ was much less vis-a-vis jewellery – the market was NOT cornered.
I wonder [idly, I only have a very amateur interest] if platinum and palladium may also leap – or fall …
Auto
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Platinum prices flying as well.
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You are not alone wondering that, many are. I looked last week and couldn’t find a Pt ETF, so not easy. I don’t want rounds.
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March 27, 2025 – The Silver Squeeze: Lessons from the Hunt Brothers and Market Cycles
In financial history, few events illustrate the power of market cycles as vividly as the Hunt brothers’ attempt to corner the silver market in the late 1970s. As we approach the 45th anniversary of this dramatic episode, it serves as a compelling study of how financial patterns repeat with remarkable precision – particularly the importance of the 45-year time cycle. This cycle is not just a historical curiosity; it is a crucial tool for anticipating future market behavior.
Are we about to see some major moves in precious metals?
A Hedge Against Uncertainty
The Hunt brothers – Nelson Bunker, William Herbert, and Lamar—were Texas oil heirs who viewed silver as a hedge against inflation and monetary instability. Following President Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, they distrusted paper currency and saw silver as a tangible store of wealth. With private gold ownership restricted in the U.S., they began accumulating vast amounts of silver, not just as a speculative asset but as a safeguard against economic turmoil.
Cornering the Market
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Two big differences:
The hunt bros. tried squeezing the futures on Comex. There was no shortage of supply at the time.
They used leverage themselves and were thus hoist on their own petard when Comex changed the rules overnight.
This time it is primarily a squeeze of the physical, focused on the LBMA.
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Current spot price per kg of silver is:
$2,417 USD / $3,599 AUD
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Gotta love this blog!! Great general scientific discourse. Probably best health advice during the COVID bollocks and now investment advice!! What’s next – cooking recipes? Have been meaning to invest in gold: silver now for some time and this article has given me a little shove.
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Buy physical silver …not on paper.Purchases under five thousand dollars are not recorded anywhere officially.
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>Purchases under five thousand dollars are not recorded anywhere officially
But when you sell it’s recorded officially.
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I can’t get over how little imagination some of you have.
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I don’t plan to buy any more silver ATM, but took a look at a couple of bullion dealers yesterday anyway. No low-premium silver available, only high-premium coins and bars.
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This link is a bit outside my wheelhouse but it may benefit those who have purchased gold and silver and are good at baking. You can corner the market.
https://www.cakecraftcompany.com/blog/golden-elegance-edible-leaf-flakes-on-cakes/
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Shorting is a great way to pick up any instrument cheaply, by selling puts at or below market price.
looks like your shorting the market however you keep the put premium and if the price drops to your strike price, you get to pick up the underlying at that price and keep the premium. Great way to acquire something you really want to get, at below market prices.
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Commonly called “Picking up pennies in front of a steam roller”.
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The term I often use is “eating like a bird but getting Sh*t on by an elephant”
Used by the big players with very deep pockets. Buffet did it during the GFC on the major US indices he was deep in the red for quite awhile.
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Fortunes have been lost short selling TSLA. It is way overpriced, we all know that but markets can stay illogical longer than punters can stay solvent.
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Indeed Scott. JP Morgan has such market power it is able to shake out the small investors by crashing the spot price with its borrowed money buying ‘paper shorts’. Then after the crash, it could buy the real silver bars of the victims at a lower price.
If this isn’t illegal predatory behaviour, it should be.
Fractional reserve banking makes this possible. Without vast sums of money borrowed from thin air, it would not be so easy for the uber rich to get even richer.
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Search Assist
JPMorgan Chase was fined $920 million for engaging in “spoofing,” a manipulative trading practice where traders placed orders they did not intend to execute to influence market prices. This penalty was part of a settlement with U.S. regulators for their illegal trading activities in precious metals and U.S. Treasuries over an eight-year period.
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It’s an interesting situation.
The precious metal bugs will be raking in big profits if they sell before the crash.
The paper bugs (no physical possession) will get wiped out in the crash.
There’s only 1oz physical for every 250 paper contract ounces (not 100:1 as above) so only one contract gets fulfilled, the rest are toast.
Futures! 😁
The current shortfall is 800 million ounces, but the situation’s been getting worse for years (200M ounces shortfall in 2020), bear markets, reduced silver ore grade, stricter environmental laws, rising production costs and 7 years+ just to get a mine up and running.
Demand is around 25% above supply, the highest ever.
Silver batteries? Woo-hoo!
Tulip mania in metals.
That aside, something’s starting to stink, and reeks of a setup…
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How do paper longs get “wiped out”?
The worst that can happen for a speculator is that they are paid out in cash, not metal, at the last posted price before force majeure is declared. If things are so broken that this can’t happen a “bad trade” is the least of your worries.
If a manufacturer bought forward to establish a price on metal he always intended to take delivery of and delivery is then refused, he could be in big trouble.
Be careful what you wish for.
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It seems a MAJOR paper bug BANK just went tits up and got liquidated as they couldn’t meet the margin call, even with the help of $19B in repo assistance, plus the extra $34B now added…
Can’t get wiped out?
Developing..
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Who is the bank, name names. If they were long silver, how are they in trouble?
The repo market is short term interbank lending, it has little to do with Comex. Current bank problems are because the 40% part of the 60/40 investment rule is underwater because rising interest rates reduce the value of older, lower interest, bonds. As bank’s lose liquidity other banks are reluctant to lend to them, even overnight.
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rising interest rates reduce the PAR value of older, lower interest, bonds.
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What crash do you mean John? The silver price has almost certainly been suppressed for years. With probably 300-to-1 ‘paper silver’ in the market, the true market for physical bars has been buried under wild speculation.
There may be a crash after the mania starts? With both China and JP Morgan likely to restrict supply in the near future and the time-dependent Tech industry caught in this pincer, and utterly dependent on silver — it’s hard to see how prices will ever meaningfully return to $50/oz silver unless there is massive coordinated shorting. If that happens the tech sector will scoop up any ounces in fives minutes and the price will return to the new heights. Now that the other banks know JP Morgan is long long long silver, less people will be wiling to take the short position. Perhaps China might throw money at it, if it thought it could pick up more silver from overseas and if it happened to have a lot of USD that it sensed were about to be inflated away…
If the Asian Guy is an AI stooge for JP Morgan, we could imagine that right now JP Morgan want all the other players to know their position. Everything just changed…
PS: The 800m oz shortfall is the cumulative deficit from 2020 – 2025 — not one individual year.
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China is a major Au producer and THE major refiner [I think]. They buy doré direct from miners, short-circuiting London and Swiss refiners.
How they will play this is above my pay grade.
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Hi all
Nobody has yet mentioned the electric vehicle bubble bursting But I’m not sure that there’s that much silver in an electric vehicle either Still it might be good for the price of copper
Happy New year all
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Incidentally, for Australians seeking to preserve their wealth with silver, gold, platinum or palladium you are usually required to produce ID and have it recorded either due to government legislation or individual vendor policy.
So if there is a record of you having it, the government can just as easily confiscate it as state and federal governments become increasingly bankrupt with their unrestrained spending. They could for example force you to exchange it for worthless fiat money like A$.
They have had the laws to do it before.
And why wouldn’t such a concept be applied to other precious metals?
Plus communist-dominated Labor Governments and politicians and their senior public serpents have zero respect for the sanctity of your private property (except for that of their own of course).
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Rubbish. Why do you love scaremongering?
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Not rubbish as there are precedents, often related to wars or impending wars. Low probability it seems , although with Albo and Chalmers in place you never really know.
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There would be no point in Australia confiscating Au, Ag if they can’t unilaterally raise the price soon after. I am assuming it won’t be stolen without payment, but then it would be far more profitable to confiscate RE or nationalise miners/oilers.
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Due to bikie gang action (so they say) all purchases at the Perth Mint require an account with ID. Smaller amounts can be purchased at other bullion traders without ID.
If the US government thinks it need silver in the national interest for the AI race or electronics, or national security, you can bet the Australian government will be coerced into nationalizing silver.
If the Chinese government thinks it’s in their national interest, they have quite a lot of leverage over us too.
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You can buy up to $5,000.00 at Ainslies in Melbourne without i.d. If you go in to their office as a couple, you can buy $5,000.00 each.
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How do you sell it, when silver is going to be nationalised?
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The Green Confiscation has begun. Buried deep within the 1,850-page climate bill, a new law has been signed that gives the U.S. government the authority to inventory, regulate, and potentially seize privately held precious metals, including silver, platinum, and palladium, under the guise of protecting the environment and transitioning to renewable energy.
https://youtu.be/zTPIM-VNzHA?si=9gykY6epZvM5ZTla
From Perth Mint:
“To place orders for more than AUD 5,000, we will need to verify your identify in accordance with Australian Anti -Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing regulations.”
Can’t use Bullion Bourse as they got shutdown for GST evasion years ago. 😆
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Just a historical note Han, which you’re clearly unaware of:
https://imgbox.com/NQh5x4Kq
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I know far more about US forced purchase than you do, it seems. It was NOT confiscated, it was bought at the price at the time. Tell me how the Gov. would explain why they need to steal our silver.
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Yes, the US gov’t bought gold at their price.
They also confiscated it, if it wasn’t declared.
(hoarding, safety deposit boxes etc).
They then unilaterally set the price ongoing…
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Correction:
No name or address is required by the Government at time of purchase if the value is under $5000. It means multiple purchases of smaller amounts is possible, (but a pain in the butt) to achieve a decent stash.
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Except of the seller suspects a series of structured transactions to not exceed $5000 in any one purchase then they are still obliged to report it.
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Only on purchases over 5,000 dollars.And vice versa in selling it.You can go to Collins St in melb and go to ten seperate dealers in one building….no questions asked….apparently nudge nudge wink wink.
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One thing you all overlooked: the west, including Australia, were on the gold standard in 1959. Now that the need to have reserves no longer applies, it would be interesting, indeed amazing if seizure would/could occur.
Leaving aside the CCP, doing their usual malign manipulation, I wonder if we might be looking at a repeat of the Dutch Tulip/South Seas bubbles. Interesting times
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Surely we are sitting pretty? We have piles of silver, iron ore, aluminium, lithium, copper, gold, uranium, etc. You’d have to be a pretty hopeless manager to fail to capitalise on our bounty… errr…
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Yes indeed.
Australia has lots of just about all minerals.
The problem is increasingly getting approval to get them out of the ground due to extensive lawfare, massive over-regulation, land claims, green claims, tribute to be paid, claimed presence of animist and totemic religious dieties living in or on the ground, claimed “songlines”, etc.. Of course, high energy and labour costs on top of that.
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Australia has very few silver miners on the ASX to invest in. As a Goldnerd we see in the data that usually silver is just a byproduct of another mineral project, though that may change if it gets to $300/oz.
Despite us apparently having the second largest reserves of silver (after Peru) it is hard to find companies on the ASX that are a pure silver play. I suspect partly we rank high on the reserve lists because we have drilled a lot of holes in this Great Southern Land. Though having the oldest crust in the world sometimes helps.
https://www.jmbullion.com/investing-guide/facts/silver-reserves-by-country/
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On top of that, they need to realise that Part IV of the Banking Act was “Suspended from operation” in 1975 by Peter Costello.
This allows the miner to sell bullion/dore freely on the market to whoever/whenever they decide, whether licensed or not.
Part IV may be re-instated at any time by the whim of the incumbent Government.
Parliament does not need to sit.
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We have no pure Ag miners of size AFAIK. Glencore, owners of Mt Isa are O/S owned.
Search Assist
In 2024, Glencore’s silver production was approximately 19.3 million ounces, which was a slight decrease from 20 million ounces in 2023. The company continues to be a significant player in the silver market, alongside its production of other metals and commodities.
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The A$ is up abt 5% V US$ in the last month, but this is not abnormal: The A$ tends to rise with the price of Au. Only a dedicated currency trader would trade this, it is a soft correlation.
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Incidentally, on the topic of precious metals and currency, there is vastly more cash in circulation than the value of gold.
From Gulag AI:
Current Snapshot (2025 Estimates)
Total Above-Ground Gold: ~$25-28 Trillion (USD).
Global Broad Money (M2): ~$96 Trillion (USD).
Physical Cash (M0): ~$8-9 Trillion (USD).
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You forgot to list the
$300trillion plus in debt to the balance sheet.
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Any battery that requires several hundred grams to a kilo of silver is a non starter for widespread adoption. There simply isn’t that much silver.
It is also just as well that digital photography was invented. I remember back around the late 1980’s/early 1990’s that there was concern of too little silver for photography and there was a search for alternatives which turned up nothing. Bit like lead in solder for electronics which the benighted Euroweenies banned. Hello tin whiskers which are being blamed for the odd unreproduceable glitches in aircraft flight control systems.
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Yes, I dread the day when Australia goes further woke and bans leaded solder.
I suspect that the only reason it hasn’t yet been banned is that politicians and the senior public serpents who tell them what to think are too technically ignorant to know about it, probably don’t even know what solder is.
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It’s been banned for 20 years in the EU.
More heat? Whatever.
Joints look crystalline? Whatever.
Everything looks like a Grundig pcb from 30 years ago? Whatever. 😆
Gotta save the planet!
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Effectively banned already. Companies who do any business in the EU made it their policy too, worldwide. In this way the EU regulations spread far and wide. I’d rather the bastards were embargoed by the rest of the world.
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I am very suspicious of the featured videos. I can’t say he is wrong but I suspect they are AI with the usual associated errors.
This is not a short squeeze on Comex, it is a physical squeeze on the LMBA.
I was pointing out this trade a while ago, BTW.
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That should be LBMA, of course.
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Asian Guy is definitely an AI creation, but it’s hard to argue with the content.
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I didn’t know we had this in common. I’ve been stacking for decades. I started buying Au @ A$700 and round 50c well below $10. The Gov. has no idea of this DM.
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Why wouldn’t they know if you announce it, and even peg the value for your CGT. You don’t really think you are anonymous here do you?
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CGT is assessable on sale. I haven’t sold.
I do have a Centrelink appt. to update my affairs on the passing of Mrs H but they will only be interested in $ value, not details.
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Sorry to hear about Mrs H, Hanrahan. My condolences.
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Thanks Peter, but it was a blessed release. Az is a terrible affliction. Her otherwise good health worked against her, there was no c0-morbidity to bring things to an end sooner.
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Empathy abounds. My wife did have a comorbidity and her release, somewhat unexpected, was a blessing.
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David was long gold when Gordon Brown sold off the British reserve for $250/oz. Being a math guy, he had looked at the numbers on fiat currencies and saw what was coming (though “the timing” was much longer than expected).
I know I don’t talk about it much (it has been a very tough decade for gold investors until recently) but I have written about gold, fiat currencies and bankers from the start. https://joannenova.com.au/tag/gold/ There has been a little “Goldnerds” badge and link on the sidebar for years.
Knowing how the fiat currency system worked was very useful. I remember being chilled when I looked at who was pushing the renewables barrow and found the same names I had seen in the banking bubbles. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Deutsch Bank. Barclays, HSBC.
See Carbon credits: another corrupt currency? (from 2009)
Skeptics of Big Government Science are often also skeptics of Big Government Money. When we went to Bali to the UNFCCC in 2007 about half the skeptic team there was very much also into gold.
This is also the reason I keep harping on about BlackRock…
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Yes, I remember “Golden” Brown and Peter Costello selling at the market bottom. Australia’s best treasurer. Bah, Humbug!
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The squeeze on Silver will have a flow on effect to new products like Graphene, which has high conductivity rates, like silver. It is expensive to produce, but with the rising price of silver it will become feasible.
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Another aspects of silver is that it is actually consumed. The dominate market for silver is industrial uses, recycling recovery rates are low so it is actively consumed, which must be replaced as well as meet new demand.
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and the amount used per item in consumer electronics is small so uneconomic to recover. Ag used in missiles is hard to recover once they go “Bang”.
The amount of silver used in guided missiles, particularly the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM), is a subject of significant public interest and varying estimates. Some sources claim that a single Tomahawk missile contains up to 500 ounces (approximately 13.6 kilograms or 30 pounds) of silver, primarily used in high-energy silver-zinc batteries, electrical contacts, circuit boards, and solder joints.
This estimate is supported by reports indicating that silver’s exceptional electrical and thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, and bonding strength make it indispensable for mission-critical systems like guidance, navigation, and telemetry.
However, other informed sources suggest a much lower amount, estimating only 10 to 15 ounces of silver per missile, mostly concentrated in solder and small batteries.
The discrepancy likely stems from the classified nature of military specifications, with exact material compositions not publicly disclosed.
While the 500-ounce figure is widely cited in media and investment circles, it remains unverified by official sources, and the actual quantity may be significantly less.
AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.
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Uneconomical due to equipment and power costs if one uses electrolysis…
However, there are a range of chemical processes offering the same high recovery rate (98%+) for far less cost.
Cooking oil (fatty acids) are the rage right now.
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Lead free solder can have a small amount of silver alloyed with the tin.
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Ha ha … yeah that’s convenient … don’t pay for anything until you get it delivered.
If it was the treasury you can be about 95% sure they are misrepresenting their holdings … but with private stuff perhaps that’s only 80% sure.
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15 or 20 years ago I saw an article pointing out that the estimated amount of silver in the earth’s crust *as a whole* (not just easily recoverable, but everything) wasn’t enough to be able to build the number of solar panels the world was projected to need to simply cover the projected increase in elecrtical demand by 2030 — and this was before the AI revolution increasing demand even more than those projections — much less how much land would need to be set aside, now much copper would be needed for transformers and cabling and so on. The conclusion was, of course, that solar simply couldn’t be a long-term solution.
I’ve not seen anything to change my mind about solar since then. I’m actually a little surprised that raw materials not being available hasn’t been broguht up more as a point against this so-called “green transition” to solar all along. I see it occasionally, but usually as an aside. “Oh by the way, it’s physically impossible to build the amount of stuff that’s needed” seems a little more primary to me, but.. eh, whatever.
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Material scarcity is regularly pointed out but there are none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear. We must talk louder I guess.
Ag is epithermal so most deposits have been found already. More will be found, of course, but not necessarily as fast as existing deposits are depleted. Besides, most Au mined is a by-product of Cu, Pb mining.
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Silver also occurs in other mineralisation types, such as SEDEX (sedimentary exhalative) which is what Broken Hill is. (Actually, it is its own mineralisation type – BHT = Broken Hill type). SEDEX deposits worldwide frequently contain silver + lead + zinc.
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The discussion was primary silver mines. I said most Ag is a byproduct of Cu, Pb, Zn mining. A higher Ag price will not push these mines to increase production. Mex and Peru, where most Ag only mines exist, are increasingly unstable politically.
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No one has mentioned the last time silver was needed in the US for critical defence purposes.
For the Manhattan Project, the US Treasury loaned 14,700 tonnes of silver for use in the electromagnets for the calutrons for uranium isotope separation.
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That, of course, was because Cu was even harder to get during the war. Treasury weighed it to the ounce as it was returned.
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They ran out of copper for winding electric motors, so they used silver.
After WW2 had finished they were sold for scrap!
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………
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If there’s no silver, there’s no EVs. No way out!
Oh, but … what if everyone buys ICE cars instead of EVs?
Looks like the west can show two fingers to China just by changing the rules – the rules, that is, that were absurd in the first place. So if our politicians have the courage (my goodness that’s a big IF) then we can thank China (still with two fingers) for saving us from China and cruise through unscathed.
The Confucian curse is on us now. How interesting!
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I’d love for the West to raise 2 fingers to China but I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon.
In Australia, we’re so far down the renewables rabbit hole that today’s topic will be largely irrelevant to the average citizen, let alone a Lefty who thinks mining may affect the climate.
Conversely, our politicians won’t be moving to utilise our metal assets ahead of the game.
The Chinese car maker BYD (Build Your Dreams) posits a flowery name that would be better read as Build Their Dreams, because the economic model of the East selling the West EVs suits the East to a tee.
For example, a buyer of a Chinese manufactured EV is in all likelihood to be unaware that the battery in the car contains “dirty nickel” from Indonesia. That nickel is generated by coal powered smelters and there are large numbers of Indonesian workers being injured or dying from this process. There are very little media reports on this matter.
On the other hand, the Western media says bugger all. If they call out the CCP on energy hypocrisy, i’ll start to listen.
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You (the author) are correct – it’s AI. Asian guy with american accent. Repeating movements.
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Repeated phrases and misspelled words in images too.
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So, does one go out quietly collecting EPNS cutlery and candle sticks and use the chemical processes to make a little living?
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China likes silver, nothing new under the sun. When China made luxury goods that the West coveted 500 years ago, the West was unable to buy much of them because it didn’t have anything that the Chinese didn’t have and wanted. Then Spain developed the silver mines at Potosi in Latin America using locals brutally as labour, and China wanted silver. China actually accepted so much silver that it caused internal market inflation in China. Nor did it work out so well for Spain, whose aristocracy just blew their wealth instead of investing in their future.
50
I picked up the “Asian Guy” a few days ago and don’t quite know what to make of him. But he rang one big alarm bell today by saying what we’ve all noticed – the sudden collapse of the silver price overnight heralds the collapse of currencies.
Everyone holding silver, especially those who bought at $80+ is now dumping it to get the cash, which undermines the currency. The fact that paper silver is now worthless because everyone now wants to get their hands on real silver is causing problems.
It amounts to fractional reserve banking which is just banking witchcraft to create money out of thin air, but what it actually does is create inflation and destroy the currency.
Pass the popcorn, please. This looks like being a biggie!
10
Silver is certainly ‘in play’. Comex hiked its margin rates twice which led to the fall from its recent record high. However this is not a big fall given the extent of margin hikes. I sense the fundamentals are so strong the price will bounce up again despite the attempts to manipulate it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/precious-metals/silver-stumbles-more-margin-hikes-export-restrictions
00
The thing about Gold/Silver is you own the metal, stored under your mattress, and there are some worries associated with that, otherwise you store it at the Bank, and they pay you interest.
00