Investment U: The Price of Silver’s Rising: This Time, There Are No Scapegoats

 
by David Fessler, Investment U’s Energy and Infrastructure Expert
Thursday, April 21, 2011

“Silver Thursday” is a day that's been in the history books for more than 31 years. For those of you too young to remember Woodstock or the Allman Brothers Band, you probably have no idea what Silver Thursday is, either.

This is a story about silver's previous meteoric rise, one that occurred in late 1979 and early 1980. Alas, it had an all-to-familiar Madoff-esque twists to it: fear, irrational exuberance and greed.

The story begins back in the early 1970s, when two brothers, Nelson Bunker and William Herbert Hunt, decided they would begin to accumulate silver.

They believed that the U.S. government was printing too much money, and thus devaluing the dollar. Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?

The Hunts further believed that silver, like its golden cousin, would become a haven for investors, too. They wanted to invest in something that wasn't denominated in – or tied to – paper currency…