Posted on 10/23/2014 4:46:30 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
Nelson Bunker Hunt, the Texan oil billionaire whose cornering of the silver market in the late 70s took the silver price to what is still its all-time high of $50 an ounce has died at the age of 88 in a care home.
In the oil boom of the 1980s Mr. Hunt was reckonned to be the world’s richest man, a title held by Bill Gates founder of Microsoft today. Apart from his huge oil investments Mr. Hunt diversified into cattle, race horses, land and other real estate, sugar, banks, art, a pizza chain as well as most famously silver.
Price collapse
By January 1980 the value of his holdings topped $4.5 billion but he lost more than a billion in the silver price collapse that year. Subsequent litigation followed him for many years resulting in further losses and far exceeded a $10 million fine from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for alleged price manipulation, although ironically it was an unexpected change to the futures market that brought Mr. Hunt down.
The price of other commodities also tumbled in the eighties with disastrous consequences for the Hunt brothers. Mr. Hunt filed for bankruptcy in 1988 and much of his remaining fortune was liquidated to pay creditors and the US taxman.
In many ways he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth as one of seven children belonging to the ‘first family’ of legendary H.L. Hunt, a Texan oil pioneer who made a huge fortune from Placid Oil then one of the largest of the independent oil companies. Nelson Hunt went on to bigger and bigger things until the shiniest of precious metals caught his eye.
All-time high
It is a remarkable testament to his powers of manipulation that the silver price has never recovered to the price he forced it to in 1980, admittedly at a moment in history that was also a high for gold with inflation raging in the West, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Today silver sits at $17 an ounce and at a historic low in relation to gold. It’s a no-brainer as a shield against future inflation but where is that at the moment? Eventually all the money printed by the global central banks will most likely result in inflation of consumer prices like the 1970s, and it will be silver’s day again. History does tend to repeat itself.
But the greatest silver speculator of all time has not lived to see it.
Boy do I remember him. Fortunately, I made a bit of money when silver was going up. SO glad I got out when I did.
Goldbug ping.
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