Chris Martenson

In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Ted Butler discuss:

• How Precious Metals Spot Prices Get Set In This Market
  • The big banks operating in the paper markets have oversized influence
• Silver's Moonshot Potential
  • An "accident waiting to happen" in terms of upside
• Likely Triggers Of A Silver Supply Squeeze
  • A number of candidates abound
• JP Morgan Is Amassing The World's Largest Silver Horde
  • Positioning itself for higher prices ahead?

Ted Butler returns to provide an extremely in-depth explanation of how the precious metals futures markets work (very important to understand this, as that's where PM prices are determined). Yes, it's an unlevel playing field; and yes, the big banks are at the heart of the unfairness. But — as he explains in this hour-long exposition — Ted is confident the fundamentals of supply and demand in the silver market will one day trump all, and why silver is "an accident waiting to happen" in terms of price upside:

What I am saying is: there is such an incredibly small amount of new silver that is available from current production (I’m including recycling because that is where it basically comes from) that it can be gobbled up in a second.

How can the price be so cheap with these kinds of facts and circumstances? The answer is we go back to the managed money, technical funds and the commercial banks. The price is being set in paper trading; it's not being set by the actual acquisition or disposal of real metal. It has nothing to do with that at all. And that can’t last forever.

We've already experienced expressions of this fact. I think we started talking with each other years ago when silver was in the single digits — $4, $5, $6 an ounce — then it ran to close to $50 in the beginning of 2011. The reason it can have these breathtaking price advances is because there is so little of it that when anybody goes to buy it, it just has a pronounced and disproportionate impact on price.

As Bunker Hunt, the late famous silver speculator and investor from years ago said, and it is more true today than it has ever been: Silver is an accident waiting to happen. And that accident is in terms of price to the upside.