Russia Buying Silver!!!
cladking
Posts: 28,656 ✭✭✭✭✭
Hold on to your hats.
Even if this doesn't spread (and it will) silver is heading far higher.
Tempus fugit.
1
cladking
Posts: 28,656 ✭✭✭✭✭
Comments
Just saw that article.... but haven't read through it yet. If there really are shortages of silver (usage and demand greater than current mine supply) as reported by some, then shouldn't take too much more demand / buying to increase the price.
Apparently Russia produces about 1,000,000 ounces more each month than they consume. If they retain this excess and make even modest purchases it will upend markets in very short order. There are no huge warehouses stuffed to the rafters with silver as there are with gold. we've lived hand to mouth with silver for a very long time. Any interruption in this feeding frenzy will set off a buying panic.
If you don't like the results, and people won't, just remember it had to come one way or the other eventually so don't blame Russia.
If they sell 1,000,000 ounces more a month, the price will drop.
My US Mint Commemorative Medal Set
I messed up that first sentence and have corrected it. I believe they will likely retain most or all of the excess going forward. Current buyers will have to find other sources.
buy high, sell low
@jmski52
Jim, what on earth happened, your pal Putin announced he was going to start buying the gutter and the price has done nothing but tank ever since. CNGRTS!
P.S. Perhaps he really meant to say he was going to start dumping/shorting the gutter. THKS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
by the dip, you can thank him later
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
Gold up, +0.19%
Silver up, +0.30%
I knew it would happen.
Now, Gold up, +0.61%
Silver up, 1.28%
I knew it would happen.
Gold +0.84%
Silver +2.02%
I knew it would happen.
Stack on Jim, you may only be underwater for one more decade....so long as we don't factor in inflation.
P.S. You and Putin be looking like a couple a stable business geniuses. LOL.
THKS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
Don't worry Grasshopper. I don't make the mistakes that you make.
I knew it would happen.
LOL.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
So, do you buy gold at it's alltime highs, or silver when it's off it's lows and ready to make a nice move? Step out of your sandbox and get real.
I knew it would happen.
Get used to it Jim. THKS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
I find it interesting that the FED is tripping all over themselves to lower interest rates and to talk about lower rates even as inflation numbers remain stubbornly high. This is the same thing they did back in '79; lower rates too soon. I suspect they see bank failures unless rates come down and they'd rather have hyperinflation than failures. They think they can get away with lowering rates to bailout the government and banks but this may not be true. At some point it becomes impossible to continue to spend far beyond your means.
Gold will go up so long as they cut rates and so will many other things from services to commodities. Silver can not withstand buying. This has been the issue all along; there is no silver to buy because we live hand to mouth. There are no warehouses full of silver that can be shuttled from place to place. Anyone who wants to fill a warehouse with silver will find that his buying is causing the price to explode. There is no possible result other than a buying panic because the economy must have silver to function. Silver isn't like wheat. Nobody needs wheat. If you can't buy wheat there is always oats or oranges. But everybody on earth must have silver and this silver is consumed as mine production has been falling even in the face of increasing prices. You can't just plant more silver like fields or orange trees.
The FED has cut rates .5% but banks have cut what they pay for money by 1.25%. The only competition is to lower what they pay customers. Many of these customers will hurry out to buy gold.
Silver has always been more volatile than gold. And, here it comes again. It only took two days before resuming it's trend of outperforming gold. Both metals have a strong tailwind, but silver is the smarter buy right now.
Sorry, blitz. Don't be such a slow learner. This is a 1978 redux.
Gold up +0.84%
Silver up + 1.30%
I knew it would happen.
You can always eat less bread and plant more wheat.
You can eat oats and use the energy from it to plant wheat.
You can grow oats and use the profits to buy wheat seeds.
Silver is very different. Since most silver comes from base metal mining is is analogous to having to having to plant more oats to get a little bit of wheat that grows like weeds in the oatfield. Any new primary silver mines will almost certainly use ever lower grade ores that cost more to process and leave larger scars on the land. Massive amounts of energy would be required and the production of energy more and more requires the consumption of silver. Even before the first ounce of silver is produced tons will have been consumed.
Obviously even the greatest imbalances will work themselves out. There are ways for any enterprise to use less silver and if the price spiked higher they would. New supplies will come out of the wood work and even old tailings would be worked. Some low priority products that use a lot of silver will just be discontinued. There are always sellers and if the price got high enough there are lots of households that still have great grandma's old silver tea set. There are some substitutes for some uses of silver. But never have we seen consumption as such a high percentage of total available supply. Never have we seen a vital industrial metal that has had so low a price so long that much of the production from the onset of the industrial revolution simply been wasted because it was deemed as "no good as money". Selling it has been a major profit center for the elite and it has been shoveled into landfills since they can sell far more than the entire world can buy.
These economies are all changing. Risk in selling silver you don't own is a tricky business and appears to be going the way of the horse and carriage. Maintaining a supply in an uncertain world seems to be increasingly common. If you owned a business that wouldn't be profitable with silver over $50 and you needed only 1000 oz per year what would you do? Musk bought a silver mine.
I've said for many years that one day silver will simply be revalued. It will happen very suddenly and manifest as a buying panic. I still believe it will happen eventually and it is entirely within the realm of reason that Russian buying could trigger it.
what on earth happened, your pal Putin announced he was going to start buying the gutter and the price has done nothing but tank ever since.
I think you should pay closer attention to what's happening in the world, if possible.
I knew it would happen.
Thanks Jim, don't give up. You're halfway back to 1980.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
Clad....if silver disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice. If wheat disappeared tomorrow you would have a billion dead people.
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
Hope you don't put your money where your mouth is:
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
If all the wheat disappeared tomorrow A couple hundred million people who are very dependent on one crop in third world countries would begin starving. Many but not most could be saved. Food prices would soar. There would be more hunger everywhere but agriculture would adjust after a few years.
If silver disappeared it would be a non-event... ... for about three days and then factories would begin shutting down and they'd all be down within a short time. 7 1/2 billion people would starve within two years. Whether or not the remaining 500,000,000 would still be alive in five years is tough to say but odds are good most would be gone. Population declines would continue for decades until a new economy came into being. If a new economy based on new conditions could not arise (and there are many pitfalls) the loss of silver could well become an extinction event. We have lost not only the ancient technology that required no silver but we have lost the ability to reinvent it without computers and power stations.
Silver is crucial to the production of thousands of products and most of these products have been invented in only the last half a century. There is no means of going back and nobody makes a good buggy whip any longer. If they did it would probably involve silver at some stage of its manufacture.
Humans need water, iron, energy, and silver and silver is fundamental to each. Pumping stations, blast furnaces and power plants will simply fall like dominoes. Much of the rest of modern economies is everyone taking in each others laundry.
"We have lost not only the ancient technology that required no silver but we have lost the ability to reinvent it without computers and power stations."
Most modern products are garbage but even a product like a high quality pocket knife won't last forever and can't be replaced without technology and an economy that would no longer exist in five years. A man without tools and knowledge is a naked ape with no means to survive even if the world hadn't been devastated by a few. Having a doctorate in physics or anthropology won't keep you alive in a fast changing world. A pocket knife might come in handy.
And forget the warehouses full of pocket knives because without maintenance the buildings will fail within a few decades and the knives will rust into nothing within a few more even if they are what the LME calls "stainless". Real stainless won't last forever.
Like a shark man must move forward; a shark to breath and man because every "advancement", every "progress" is a sort of short cut that reduces craftsmanship and the need for knowledge and materials. Going back is not possible which is why I don't understand doomsdayers. Instead of gold and silver coin they should be collecting high quality products like pocket knives and if they live in the real world put on an addition and stock it with toilet paper.
Alternatively I would suggest we try to take care of this world and start voting our conscience instead of our pocketbooks. We all know what's right but we aren't doing it. Wheat and silver aren't going to disappear but it appears our leaders have allowed many billions of ounces of silver to be frittered away that now resides in landfills. Most silver has disappeared because of low prices and will never be recoverable. 50 billion ounces of silver has been produced, most of it since 1860, but less than 8 billion exists and only 5 billion is available. That's about 1 ounce for every living person .
50 billion ounces of silver has been produced, most of it since 1860, but less than 8 billion exists, and only 5 billion is available. That's about 1 ounce for every, living, person.
I have to agree, there are about 3 billion zombies and werewolves who don't want to buy an ounce of silver.
My US Mint Commemorative Medal Set
What is the message you are trying to relay with this post?
Are you trying to say the volume of wheat usage has decline? If so, them you have failed miserably l, like usual.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267268/production-of-wheat-worldwide-since-1990/
Wheat is the 2nd most used grain on the planet and production and demand for it increase about 1% per year. Why, you ask? Because people gotta eat.
But hey, thanks again for showing that the raw material price (wholesale prices) are the same as the good ole days of strongman leadership. Lol
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
How did humanity ever ake it that far? Lol
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
Complex language.
We believe we are "intelligent" and "wise" but in point of fact complex language simply has allowed the transfer of knowledge and learning from one generation to the next. We each are able to scramble up on the shoulders of giants because we can read what they learned.
Complex language is just a stupid human trick created by a bundle of nerves that connects the speech center to higher brain functions. Eventually this gave rise to thought which we mistake for intelligence and learning which we mistake for wisdom.
All the old ways, the methods and knowledge cavemen needed to thrive are lost and can not be reinvented even if the need arose because we don't think like they did and because we are wholly dependent on technology. Back when I had a chance of surviving a economic breakdown I carried a pocket knife and a magnetized needle which I could float on a leaf to determine directions. Where would my great grandchildren have gotten such products of modern technology?
The answer is as simple as it is impossible: They'd have had to reinvent modern technology without the aid of pocket knives or silver. They'd lack shoulders. Any of the old knowledge about science passed down through oral tradition would bore them as irrelevancies.
We must move forward.
I can't predict how much silver will be needed in 20 years to continue the march forward but I'm quite sure that it will be significantly more than it is today. Silver is unique among the heavy elements as having a stable electron shell. It is most highly conductive and reflective. It is also less reactive to most compounds than most elements. It is being used extensively in room temperature super conductivity. If this ever comes to be than the amount of silver available will be critical. It could also be needed in fusion power generation and will necessarily play at least a small role.
At this time one ounce of silver for every man woman and child is ample but this could literally change overnight. Even if it never changes we are still living hand to mouth with supplies. This isn't like iron which can always turn to ever lower grade ores because it is so common in the earth. Low grade silver ores already are being tapped because high grade ores are long gone. Smelting such ores is very expensive already.
I am absolutely certain the world would get by just fine if gutter metal never existed. THKS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
History and metaphysics are like fabric rather than skeins of yarn. Every thread is composed of fibers and is dependent on every other thread to make up a whole. It all must work together and is all dependent on the physical world and what we call the "Laws of Nature". It is dependent on what has come before. It is dependent on instrumentation and tools.
Without things like silver, iron, water, and computers there can be no modern world.
Just as it did for 6000 years prior to our new found "intelligence".
Take wheat away, and it might get a little ugly out there.
Humanity does not NEED silver. It's great to have and wear and look at, and can use used to improve standards of living, but it absolutely is not vital to the survival of our species.
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
We built the pyramids in Egypt without silver. Built aqueducts in Greece without silver. Sailed across the oceans without silver. Herded sheep and grew potatoes without silver.
You were a teacher if I'm not mistaken. Have you forgotten this, not taught it to your students?
Billions of folk today live without computers....they don't give a dang about silver.
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
Yet silver thrives. LOL
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
Gutter thrives? It's less than half the value it was in 1980. LOL THKS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
Yet today it thrives. LOL
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
Wanna bet?
We really don't know how the pyramids were built but if they actually used ;linear funiculars as is apparent then the antimicrobial properties of silver may have been employed for numerous processes such as maintaining low friction surfaces. There's no significant silver in their copper and bronze but they did do extensive metal working and might have used it in their tools. I'd grant this is unlikely. They also had extensive knowledge of anatomy and some knowledge of electricity such as in nerves and lightning though again, I believe there is not much probability of silver uses here. However it is known that some capstones were covered in electrum with a low gold content.
Keep in mind that when the pyramids were built silver was worth a few multiples of gold and they used some unknown barter system rather than money or coin.
The pyramid builders were orders of magnitude more knowledgeable than we assume. It will take decades to figure out what they knew and exactly how they knew it. The idea of stumble footed ignorant savages dragging tombs up ramps is simple nonsense.
I don't know much about this but Greece certainly was aware of silver and used it for money. It is highly unlikely their economy would have functioned at all without silver once it was adopted and the old ways were forgotten.
No. This isn't true. The poorest people in the world stumble about junkyards for 14 hours per day to gather enough silver and gold to eat as their abusers rack up profits. The most isolated people, the Yanomami indians in Brazil use steel axes and metal cooking pots. Another group of indigenous people off the coast of Africa are dependent on some modern tools.
Economies are complex interwoven processes that are interdependent. You can remove only bits and pieces without destroying the entire fabric. Covid lockdowns proved they are more robust than I once believe but government changed our economy to taking in one another's laundry starting in 1972 as our factories were shut down. During covid we continued to import and distribute manufactured goods and food. It was mostly millions of laundromats that were shut down and unnecessary supervisory and financial concerns.
We can no longer make steel axes for the Yanomami without copious amounts of silver in millions of applications. Someone could figure out how to smelt iron using mudbrick blast furnaces but even if he could he'd need silver to do it and then might not be able to smelt taconite which is about the only iron left unless you have a computer and silver to go look for high grade ore as was used in the early blast furnaces.
All complex processes from building great pyramids to landing a man on the moon require complex knowledge and an economy to support them. Nature gives nothing to life but consciousness which can identify patterns and cycles. Everything else, everything complex, from beaver dams to moon bases require consciousness and our economy requires silver in many many of its processes.
Ancient iron ores used in ancient blast furnaces were 50 to 75% pure iron. Today it is very difficult to find ore over 15%. I don't know if an ancient smelter could be configured to use such low grade ore or not. I doubt it. I believe high grade ore is still common but not on the surface. An individual with a pocket knife and a blast furnace might have a very difficult time finding it.
Sure you can say he could go back to using copper tools but this too will present challenges. This too will require extensive knowledge and learning which is hardly a one man job.
There are a handful of individuals today who are proficient in the manufacture of stone tools but man doesn't live by spears alone. He'll need to control fire, find water, and hunt/ gather. These tasks would prove very difficult in a world without silver and without knowledge of the old ways.
We must have silver and our needs increase every year. They have been rising exponentially since 1939 and are now approaching a much steeper part of the curve. I seriously doubt this will change going forward and is really the chief cause of the revaluation of silver I've always predicted. We will use ever increasing rates of silver usage and we are already consuming more than we produce. This wouldn't be such a concern if 50 billion ounces mined since the onset of the industrial revolution hadn't already been wasted to profit a few bankers.
The day could come when more than an ounce of silver per person is needed to keep the machinery running. Of course short cuts and lower qualities will be found because this is the nature of progress; to address imbalances in economies and to seek easier, more efficient, and cheaper alternatives. When I was a boy you could buy silver foil in the grocery store. Some of the aluminum foil prices now exceed the old silver foil. Such is progress.
Everything changes and while it might seem to fly as you mind your business it seems more to bound and leap if you keep your eye on it like a watched pot. Peoples' assessment of the value of silver will bound and leap some day. We aren't going to go back to pyramid building times when it was more valuable than gold but there must be a reordering or silver will co9ntinue to flow into landfills just as it does today when a three year old refrigerator quits working despite the small amount of silver in it. You can't protect silver in an era of greed and planned obsolescence except through higher prices that will result from the many forces acting upon it.
I just consider this room to move to the upside.
If silver were $200 per ounce it might drop a long way before finding a floor.
What are you talking about? It thrives?
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
If it went to $200 this forum would be dead because none of us would own it anymore.
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
Yes.
There ain't no dang steel in an axe.
Meant silver.
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
Someday Egyptology might systematically apply science and technology to understanding the pyramids similarly to how Petrie applied 19th century science. If they ever do then we'll very soon know how they were built and from there it can be determined what role silver played in it.
Don't hold your breath. Egyptology can not be shamed out of the 19th century. They are in the world's deepest rut created by putting the cart squarely before the horse and moving in circles for over two centuries. It started with Champollion because the scholars didn't like Thomas Young and has been going round and round ever since.
If there's no steel in an axe then what is it made of? I define steel as merely being carbonized iron. Adding other metals to it doesn't change the definition.
WOW, and Russia is buying silver? Or are they just keeping more of what they produce?
My US Mint Commemorative Medal Set
WOW, and Russia is buying silver? Or are they just keeping more of what they produce?
In addition to keeping what they produce, they've budgeted for treasury buying in 2025, 2026 and 2027. I can't imagine that others (including the other BRICS) won't follow suit.
I knew it would happen.
This in kindda what I'm thinking; anyone with deep pockets just saying they are going to buy silver can touch off a buying panic.
There isn't silver enough in the entire world to allow an individual or institution to spend billions of dollars without having a profound effect on price, IMS Buffet bought only 50,000,000 ounces and touched off a firestorm that apparently got the government's attention. This wasn't even half a billion dollars.
Most silver simply isn't available to markets because it's tied up in museums artefacts or already in the supply chain. Much of the silver believed to exist is nothing but paper and promissory notes. Production can't even keep up with consumption so the overhang of silver has been shrinking.
Basically the only available silver is what's in coin shops and jewelry stores but few would have more than a couple million dollars worth that can be junked out at current prices. A few billion dollars would simply decimate such supply. A few billion is chump change to some people today and every government.
The status quo will likely prevail until supplies actually begin evaporating and then it might all disappear at once. Many of the people who believe they own metal in other peoples' vaults are going to find they are victims of reserve banking. Shenanigans are rampant which is exactly how the supply has been whittled to the bone and someday it will become apparent.
Nobody wants the gutter metal and especially nobody with billions of dollars. They don't even mine for the stuff, just a byproduct of copper mining. It's pretty much useless unless you intend to eat the stuff to turn yourself blue.
RGDS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
You can get only a couple hundred pounds in a safety deposit box. What self respecting billionaire would want to walk around with a bigger key ring than any custodian.
Russia has plenty of vault space and some guards who need something to do.
useless only to those that don't know how to trade it.
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/precious-metals/article-824722
Holy smokes!
It's quite impossible for even one major player (like Russia or maybe even musk) to get into this without disrupting the markets. Imagine the effect of dozens or hundreds of individuals and states suddenly deciding they'd like a functioning economy rather than cheap silver.
Silver could beat gold to $3000
Speaking of holy smokes the article linked above omits the fact that silver is used as fuel in all cruise missiles. Every time a new military installation goes up 9in smokes 500 pound of silver does as well.
Just "wow".
The stars are in line and the ducks are heading toward the culvert.
Nobody wants the gutter metal and especially nobody with billions of dollars.
Oh really? Tell it to Uncle Sam.
I knew it would happen.