Will Dateline cover "peak silver"?Will Dateline cover "peak silver"?
To a Dateline Producer,
Hello. I'm the silver investor who spoke to you about "peak silver" at the National Publicity Summit in January 2005. At the time, you indicated that Dateline was hesitant after having done your "peak oil" story, which may have caused oil prices to run up to $50, which then fell back to about $35.
However, today, you ought to be proud of Dateline's reporting on peak oil for two reasons. First, oil is back up, and hitting new highs at nearly $67, and now, many more people are talking about peak oil.
Now, about silver in relation to oil:
First, the "peak oil" proponants say that the world has about 40 years of supply of oil in the ground. OK, but... The world has only 14 years worth of silver in the ground!
Second, the oil to silver price ratio:
In 1980 at prior peak prices, silver hit $50/oz. and oil hit $43/barrel. Silver was more!
In 1999 at recent low prices, silver hit $5/oz. and oil hit $10/barrel. a 2:1 ratio
Today, silver is $7/oz., and oil hit $67/barrel. That's a 9.5 to one ratio!
Thus, silver is extremely cheap, AND running out. And thus, silver prices are not only the story of the century, but I believe that silver is the greatest investment opportunity in the history of the world. Why?
Silver at $7/oz. is about 1/300th of the value of historic norms lasting for 1000's of years. The amount of silver in a silver dime was historically worth a day's wage, whether 100 years ago in the U.S. or whether it was a Roman denarius 2000 years ago. At $7/oz., those same dimes are worth about 50 cents each, and you can buy about 300 silver dimes with a day's wage of $150.
Thus, if the world returns to using silver as money, after people panic and abandon paper money, the value of silver will increase by 300 times greater than today.
But that does not take into account the scarcity of silver: peak silver!
At the end of World War II and the beginning of the electronic age, the trend has been to consume, in industry & electronics, nearly all the silver ever mined since the beginning of time; 7/10ths of an ounce of silver per person, per year, in modern industrial nations. I estimate that modern electronic life has consumed 36 billion out of 40 billion ounces of silver mined since the world began.
Known, above-ground, refined silver may be limited to less than 300 million ounces. That's less than 1/20th of an ounce of accessible silver per person on the planet. Including unknown stockpiles of refined silver (perhaps up to 4 billion ounces such as unknown quantities of silver jewelry in India), there is still probably less than one ounce of silver per person on the planet.
It's time for Dateline to take pride in breaking the peak oil story, and to investigate and report on the peak silver story.
Sincerely,
Jason Hommel
silverstockreport.com
(530) 432 9671