Gold is unobtainable for most people in the world the way it’s priced right now. If a global crisis hits silver is going to be remonetized by the free market. If it’s not just an industrial metal, like it is today, if governments and central banks start holding it (silver), and this is a copy-cat effect, because obviously you know this, once one of the central banks does something the rest will do it because they don’t want to be different. – Lior Gantz, The Daily Coin, Silver Will Be Re-Monetized By The Market

In 1965 Lyndon Johnson signed the Coinage Act of 1965, which removed the silver content from dimes and quarters and took the silver content in half-dollars down to 40%.   In 1970 silver was removed completely from the half-dollars.   The excuse given was that the country was running out of silver.    But the truth is that the U.S. Government in conjunction with England was dumping its Central Bank stock of silver  (and gold) onto the market in order to prevent the price of these precious metals from rising against the U.S. dollar, which had been effectively the world’s reserve currency for 20 years.

In fact, the silver-based U.S. coins were disappearing from the market because the value of the silver content in these coins had risen above the face value of the coins.  It was real-time proof of Gresham’s Law.   In effect, it was an effort by the U.S. Government to de-monetize silver, which has been civilized history’s oldest monetary metal.  The U.S. could not yet de-monetize gold because, based on the Bretton Woods Agreement, the U.S. was required to back all Treasuries bonds issued to foreign buyers with gold.   But a year after the last remnants of silver were removed from U.S.-minted coins, the Nixon Government disconnected gold from the reserve currency.

Ultimately, silver will become re-monetized.  Silver has been, is and always will be “poor man’s gold.”  In today’s episode of The Daily Coin, we discuss the eventual re-monetization of silver.   As a bonus, we describe the fraudulent nature of Tesla’s latest earnings report.

No State shall…coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts. – U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1