A silver lining in a the gathering storm clouds

The linked story at the end of this post is an excellent summary of the growing China vs. USA cold war and how China is trying to shield itself from any blow back that may come as part of any financial attack it launches on the US.

In reference to silver the article does mention that China was once one of the world's largest exporters of silver and now they are a minimal exporter, although it doesn't say why China had all this silver in the first place. Whilst there is some primary (defined as more than 50% of the income of the mine is derived from the sale of silver ore) silver mines in China the fact is almost 80% of the world's silver is derived from by-product smelting of base metal ores (mostly zinc, lead, copper). Whilst China does produce such ores locally overwhelmingly they obtain their base metals in the form of concentrates (ie ore that has had the surrounding rock removed, but has not been refined to separate out the constitute elements). China has over the last decade has become the refiner for the world, taking concentrates from countries such as Australia, Canada and Brazil refining them and then re-exporting some of the resulting metal back to the rest of the world. It is not surprising that China has become the refiner of choice, smelters are dirty environmental nightmares. Acid rain (from sulfur emissions causing the creation of sulphuric acid (H2SO4) when mixed with water vapour - many base metals are found as sulphides, ie contain sulphur) and lead poisoning being the most notable issues. Just look at a photo of Queenstown Tasmania, Australia to see what acid rain from a tin smelter can do to a formerly forested valley HERE and a report on how Chinese lead smelters HERE can affect the local children.

China has been promoting silver investments to their populations from at least early 2009 (reported on this blog on 24 Oct 2009 HERE). History repeats itself in this instance as China was once the greatest holder of silver prior to becoming a vasil state of the British Empire and the resultant Opium Wars. It fact it has been postulated the Great Depression was in part initiated by Britain to force China off their silver standard. Let us not forget that silver has been used in more places for a longer periods of time as money than anything else, at least 5,000 yrs. Even Jesus was sold out for 30 pieces of silver, not gold, and that Jesus kicked out the "money changers" from the temple for running a Jewish silver coinage scam.

One day silver will return to world coinage and a new age of reason will be ushered in, just as happened in ancient Greece and Rome when they instituted a standard set of weights, measures and purity of the metal contained in their money - leading to unprecedented growth in science and knowledge. Only when these great empires debased their coinage did they fall – very reminiscent of the unparallelled issuance of money from the last great empire, the USA....see the latest Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis graph of monetary expansion to see the shocking truth HERE.

A silver lining