Silver is nice

  Silver is traditionally a monetary unit second only to gold. But it has flaws that Gold does not possess. It has a tendency to corrode and tarnish. Not as much as copper and iron, but it will still tarnish over time. The metal is also much more abundant than gold thus it suffers from two different sets of flaws.

 2008 was a terrible year for silver. The price for silver collapsed by 50 percent. I suspect it was because people were dumping their personal silver reserves and selling them for fiat money so as to pay off their personal debts. In contrast, very few people were willing to dump their gold to meet their debt obligations. Oil was being dumped, gas was being dumped, iron and copper was being dumped. But many people refused to part with their gold for some reason.

  Silver is still a great metal. But the contemporary ratio between silver and gold was 50 to 1 or 60 to 1. Stretching further back, silver was 16 to 1 to gold.