I remember Silver. Is it OIL this time?

In the late 1970’s two brothers Nelson and William Hunt were trying to corner the silver market. They drove the price of silver from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to $50 an ounce in January 1980. By the time they were finished they owned 1/3 of the worlds supply, then came “Silver Thursday” March 27, 1980. The price of silver stopped going up and led to panic on commodity and futures exchanges. The price collapsed. Even today, 20 years later silver is way under the high of 1980.

Let’s jump forward to oil of today. The biggest argument I hear is that worldwide demand is up. OK, worldwide demand is up, but did it jump two, three times overnight. In fact according to www.chinaview.com between 2007 and 2008 the consumption rose by 2.5 percent and in the first quarter the consumption rose by 8 percent. So where is the doubling. In the USA consumption even went down, very slightly, but down. It is estimated that world consumption will grow by 50% by the year 2030. If we were to push more solar and wind energy the demand might even drop further.

So are we living the Hunt brothers all over again? I think so. Will the market collapse? I hope so. Are the Sheiks and speculators pushing up the prices? I would have to lean to a yes. Maybe just maybe, some of the extreme terrorists realize they can’t take us over by military action, but they can hurt us beyond means by oil action. And just maybe our oil top heavy President and Vice-President don’t see the big picture because they are blinded by money pouring into their friend’s pockets.

What can we do? Let’s start doing our share, lets allow solar panels on rooftops and wind generators in Indiana. Let’s develop tax incentives like many other states for these products. We have lots of empty factories, could we help start up production of energy products, from windmills, to power invertors to power factor units. That would bring jobs to Indiana and reduce our power needs at the same time. What a different concept.