24. A Global Silver Craze
The Hunt brothers’ scheme created a global silver craze. As silver prices doubled, trebled, quadrupled, and kept on rising, people around the world began melting silverware. Thieves went on a silver stealing spree. Tiffany’s ran ads attacking the Hunt brothers’ speculation for making silver unaffordable to consumers.
The Hunt brothers ended up creating a bubble market for silver. It was a bubble in which the Hunts themselves, as the world’s biggest hoarders of silver, were most at risk. Then the Federal Reserve, whose mission includes averting such bubbles, stepped in and issued a rule specifically targeted the Hunts. It banned banks from lending to precious metal speculators. The result was a swift bursting of the bubble.
