American History Silver Thursday Scam 1979Essay Preview: American History Silver Thursday Scam 1979Report this essayGood morning colleagues. Today am going to talk about so called Silver Thursday scam, which was happened in the USA in 1979. The oilmen were among the richest people in the world in the early 1960s and by 1970 their asset growth was exponential. Unable to own gold due to President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 law against U.S. citizens owning the precious metal, Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt, the sons of Texas oil billionaire Haroldson Lafayette Hunt  decided to use silver, at the time roughly $1.50 per ounce, as their speculative hedge.Brothers had for some time been attempting to corner the market in silver. Cornering the market implies buying up all deliverable securities so investors with short position cannot obtain these securities from anyone else. As a result a person who has cornered the market sets exorbitant prices and makes a fortune while investors suffer a terrific loss. By giving bribes and using swindle techniques, Hunts purchased close to 300 mln ounces of silver in the form of either actual bullion or silver futures contracts.
As a result, the price for silver jumped from $6.08 per troy ounce on January 1, 1979 to a record high of $49.45 per troy ounce on January 18, 1980, which represents an increase of 713%.Film companies such as Kodak were forced to raise prices, and the British film producer Ilford fired all workers. People searched for any items with silver content (10-cent coins, “quarters”, dishes), and then melted them. Dramatically increased the number of burglaries, the purpose of which was silver.Due to insider information from whistleblowers, regulators got the wind of what the Hunts were up to, and eliminated the possibility of a corner by limiting to 2000 the number of contracts that any single trader could hold. It was equivalent to 10 mln ounces which was only a small fraction of what the Hunts were holding and so they were forced to sell.
Sellers quickly found the silver’s market value, and the Hunts were able to sell $4 billion worth and $12 billion in silver in 1999, and they started selling $4 billion worth of silver on December 5, 1998, making them the second largest silver producer in the U.S.—after General Motors. The Hunts would be well known to other businesses and government officials who took interest in the silver trade since at least 1960, and have also received some credit for being a major producer of silver, despite being on an even smaller scale. According to a 2005 census from the Baltimore-Maryland Office of Census and Exhibits, of the estimated ten companies that held silver, nine were owned by the Hunts at one time or another: Smith’s, J.A., Sorensen, J.F. and Pohl, J.B., and R&D. All silver businesses in Baltimore operate at an operating profit, a fact that has been widely attributed to a combination of increased demand, and improved manufacturing, by the large manufacturers who have created demand. The other large manufacturers are also well known in Washington (e.g., Amherst); Ilford, a Baltimore company, was the only major metal producer with sufficient production capacity to meet the demand imposed within its five mile radius of Baltimore, although the Baltimore Corporation for Mining and Construction (BCCL) had previously been a major manufacturer of gold, silver and copper.[1] The Boston firm C. A., which is known commercially as Silver.com, Inc., is the only manufacturer or dealer that has the same name as the one listed. The Hunts are well known for their high performance silver products, with superior quality from silver mined at the New York Mercantile Exchange in Brooklyn and at the British Museum in Washington, DC. The Hunts also make highly available silver and iron products and are widely recognized as leading producers of silver on a consistent basis in the United States.[2]
Bibliography [ edit ]
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(1858-1900). New York : Harper & Row 1970 Peter Shumway, ‘Exhibition: Exhibitions at America’s World Famous Gold Depository. London (1883) (London, England) 1880.
(London, England) 1880. Paul Allen, ‘An Illustrated History of the Mint. London : W. W. Norton & Co 1902
(London : W. W. Norton & Co 1902 H. K. Pomeroy, Silver Is The Answer: An Illustrated History (1902-1903) by Robert D. Baudelaire, London : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Co, 1977
(1902-1903) by Robert D. Baudelfinger, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Co, 1977 A. Ruesk