a letter to the editor in the Aspen Times

Dear Editor:

In 1891 Aspen was the largest silver mining district in America. A mother lode created Silver City with elegant Victorians, imposing brick buildings and miles and miles of deep, dark tunnels.

Fortunes were made ... and lost. The good old days, gone forever? Or will silver shine more brightly than ever, once again bestowing riches on all who esteem its value?

Silver is integral in modern society; demand is growing exponentially. In the '50s the U.S. had a stockpile of 3.5 billion ounces of silver, the largest hoard in history. Today it is almost all gone, while the world's stockpile has diminished from 2 billion ounces in 1990 to less than 300 million today. Last year global demand reached 800 million ounces while production managed only 600 million.

Silver has always been a store of value, a hedge against inflation and coveted for its intrinsic beauty. For centuries the value of silver to gold has hovered around 16 to 1. Today it is 65 to 1, even more astounding when you consider that most of the gold ever mined is still with us, while most of the silver has been lost in tiny bits and pieces. Meanwhile, a monetary system based on fiat money always, always fails in the horror of inflation. One-hundred thousand dollars in 1932 is now worth $2,000 while the mounds of dollars being printed today are unprecedented and have yet to cause the havoc they surely will.

Investors are beginning to catch on. In the first quarter of this year, the U.S. Mint reported record silver coin sales, consuming all of the silver mined in the states. China recently changed its law and now encourages more than a billion people to buy gold and silver. Silver is an exceptional bargain today, not simply for the reasons above, but also because its worth, along with gold, has been manipulated down for decades.

Banks, most notably JPMorgan, in cahoots with the Fed, have leased silver and gold they do not have to investors who believe they own real metal in real vaults. In 2007 Morgan Stanley was sued for millions of dollars for claiming to buy and store gold, when, in fact, it did neither. Just as the banksters went a tad overboard in leveraging mortgages, so too with precious metals. There is a massive amount of paper silver and gold, along with untold amounts of indecipherable derivatives, floating around claiming to be the real thing.

Paper metal does far more than simply rob the deceived; it is used to manipulate markets. Paper keeps the price of precious metals artificially low, enabling the unsustainable system of fiat dollars to corrupt humanity for as long as possible. The Fed, which controls our economy, yet has never been audited, is obviously in the middle of all this. The same Fed that prints trillions out of thin air and then bestows it on the criminals who caused our current economic disaster.

However, finally, after years of effort, the Commodities Futures Trade Commission held a public forum last month that explored the activities of central banks, including the Fed, in the precious metals market. The attempts to keep this investigation from our awareness were crude and distressingly predictable. A major voice in forcing the hearing was Bill Murphy of the Gold Antitrust Action Committee. He was allowed to speak for five whole minutes, which would have been enough except there was a "technical" failure and his testimony was not televised on live TV.

The other bombshell testimony that would have instantly exposed the greatest scam, ever, was not allowed. Andrew Maguire, a former Goldman Sachs metal trader, now working at the London Bullion Market, was scheduled to testify; however, he was ousted at the last moment. Maguire then went public, documenting explicit, massive manipulation. The only major news outlet that covered his story was the New York Post. The Post also reported his injuries that were caused by a hit-and-run "accident" in London a week later.

Meanwhile, the Internet has exposed this devious conspiracy, and the consequences are just now beginning to manifest. On May 9, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice launched civil and criminal probes into JPMorgan's activities in the precious metals market, centering on whether they have illegally depressed the price of silver.

They obviously have, and if and when the truth is exposed everyone in Silver City who has our favorite metal flowing in their veins will, once again, party at the Jerome.

Will Kesler
Snowmass Village