Gold and macro environment, page-461

"silver has amazing fundamental price drivers." It has the most compelling fundamental drivers of anything that I'm aware of. It has been frustrating for me accumulating a bit of physical and holding some stocks for a bit over 3 years. The fundamental forces seemed to be ignored. The ability to increase supply has been crippled by depletion of mines and lack of price incentive for exploration and mine operation as supply is consumed at a rapidly increaseing rate. The use of silver is virtually essential in a wide range of electronic components, including many military applications. The statistics used by the silver institute to calculate the rapidly increasing deficit don't even include the silver used by the military, as apparently the details of that useage are unavailable. I've read that tomahawk missiles, for example, use 5 kg of silver.
There is a lot of speculation that silver prices are heavily manipulated and shorted by a combination of U.S. banks, with the acquiesence or collusion of the U.S. government. I've seen evidence of that myself. The current head of the CFTC, Rostyn Benham, made an infamous comment about "tamping down" silver in response to a short squeeze initiated by members of Reddit a couple of years ago.
Even if the price of silver rises substantially in the short term, establishing mines to meet the soaring demand would take many years. And I doubt that demand could be met in any case. And the fundamental fact of the matter is that silver is a critical metal, even though the U.S. government does not officially acknowledge that fact. Without it our dependence on electrical components would be crippleing.
I liken the silver price to a boiling pot with a lid on it. Price action on Friday indicated that the lid may get blown off soon