Because during the last depression, the Fed confiscated gold?
Just tossing that out there. It's wouldn't matter, they can confiscate silver as well.
Treasury claims power to seize gold and silver -- and everything else
people back then were uninformed compared to today and they also trusted their government, do you really think the people who are smart enough to own and stash bullion will fall for it this time???
Silver has too many industrial uses, I extremely doubt it would ever be confiscated. The British had the Pound Sterling which was backed by silver. We had silver certificate currency which was backed by silver until 1962. I can’t think of other major currencies that used silver as a back up.
Our silver certificates were paper currency and did not back up the US dollar in a larger sense the way gold has in the past for many different nations. Circa 1975 the Swiss Franc was 40% backed by gold (only nation like that) so all the hard asset men liked it. I think it has no gold backing these days
http://seekingalpha.com/article/14922-is-the-old-gold-silver-ratio-of-16-still-alive-today
The link is the best article I’ve ever read on gold/sliver ratio. There’s much more to it than price.
Having said that, gold/silver “price” ratio is now about 60 (you can buy approx 60 ounces of silver for the price of one ounce of gold).
Over thousands of years, gold and silver have maintained a price ratio of around 15 to one. So, silver could be considered extraordinarily under-priced today. Or, gold could be correspondingly overpriced.
But, many people are betting that silver is the under-priced commodity. Fact is, at a 60 to one ratio, some-thing’s way out of whack. And, when gold and silver decide to normalize, some serious money could be made by those who guess right.
I have been betting on silver appreciation for about 10-years. And, appreciate it has. But, if I’m right, the fun is just beginning.
Good luck to all.