Silver…

Approximately 92 percent of the earth's crust is composed of igneous rock. The average occurrence of silver in igneous rock is 0.07 PPM or 0.07grams of silver per metric ton of igneous rock. By conversion:(1 metric ton/.07gram Ag)*(31.1gram/1troy oz)=444.3 metric tons of igneous rock per 1 troy oz of silver.So on average, 444.3 metric tons of igneous rock would have to be mined to obtain 1 troy oz of silver!!! Since this is economically impossible at any where near current silver prices, only the recycling of silver containing products, mining silver veins and the silver byproduct of base metal mining can provide fairly cheap silver.

Consider the following facts:600 million ounces of silver are mined yearly.
Industrial demand for silver is over 900 million ounces per year and growing.

Investment demand for physical silver has exploded. China is now encouraging its citizens to own silver.

Every measure of total know world inventories of silver in the past half-century show declines of greater than 95% (U.S. government ran out of silver in November 2000).

On an absolute and relative basis, there is less silver remaining underground than any other metal.

Silver has the largest short position ever seen in any item (from COMEX, leasing, banks and brokers selling unbacked silver certificates, there are billions of ounces sold on paper that do not even exist).Massive fiat money creation.The above factors have converged to set the stage for a silver price percentage gain of extraordinary magnitude!!!!
Regards,
David

COMEX Warehouse Stocks January 19, 2010

SILVER

4,450,452 ozs withdrawn from the dealer’s (registered) inventory
4,560,706 ozs deposited in the customer (eligible) inventory
Total dealer inventory 47.46 Mozs
Total customer inventory 65.09 Mozs
Combined Total 112.55 Mozs