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KINGS AND DINGS Cartoon published 05/07/2025 Hear the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that over sprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. — From “The Bells,” by Edgar Allan Poe If you toss a silver dollar on a hard table you will hear a distinctive ring or ‘ding.’ Silver is a musical metal the best conductor of electricity. Copper is mostly used for that since it’s cheaper, but silver is largely used in computer equipment and solar panels. Silver is an industrial metal. Silver is also real money and it’s listed in the Constitution as such, but LBJ went to base metals for our coins and drove real silver out of circulation. Our pocket change has lost much of its purchasing power. Nickels and cents have become downright annoying and the silver that once constituted dimes, quarters, and 50-cent pieces has long since vanished. Even the lowly penny is no longer copper, but instead a zinc disc sprayed with a thin veneer of copper. Ancient Rome debased their currency ahead of its collapse and we’re doing the same thing. In the Middle Ages, one ounce of gold was worth around 12 ounces of silver. That changed after the New World was discovered, which led to a great many more producing silver mines. By the 20th Century, one ounce of gold was equivalent to 16 ounces of silver. In nature, the gold to silver ratio is 1/19. Nowadays silver and gold are not used as a medium of exchange. They must be sold and converted to dollars. Precious metal is chained to the US Dollar and gold and silver’s value is always expressed in those terms. I was once an ardent silver stacker. I started in the 1990s and I amassed quite a horde of the shiny metal. I invested in silver mine stocks and some leveraged silver ETFs. I knew all the mines in Idaho’s famed Silver Valley. I was convinced I would become rich by means of silver and it almost happened. In the Spring of 2011, silver neared $50 per ounce. Over $50 would have been a disaster for JP Morgan, who would have had to cover a leveraged short derivative instrument or some such—I don’t know if this was true or not, but everyone knew the big bank was a big and chronic shorter of silver on the COMEX. Just after May 1, silver began going down precipitously. As it turned out JP Morgan’s crew was colluding and shorting silver—selling sudden and massive amounts of paper contracts while not possessing the physical. A couple years later, silver was sitting at $13. I lost a fortune and eventually sold all my physical silver to pay bills. For me I had advanced to the last verse of Poe’s poem where he talked about giant iron bells sounding a death toll. I learned a hard lesson—don’t put all your eggs in one basket, because the big banks can suddenly step on those baskets. JP Morgan was forced to admit wrongdoing and pay $436.4 million in fines and more for restitution for their illegal futures trading, but they have made billions of dollars over the decades from such lawbreaking, and they could afford it. (I never received any restitution). Yet silver still seems captured by powerful forces. Gold has broken out and will probably arrive at $4,000 per ounce, but silver seems locked down in the low $30s. The current gold to silver ratio is 1/103. That seems crazy to me, but heck, we will soon have a 40 trillion dollar debt, too. The debt dollar has caused all kinds of distortion, corruption, and misery for the average American. When will silver go up? I don’t know. I used to think could know, but things are too rigged. It may have been one of the reasons Max Kaiser, once a big silver fan, switched to Bitcoin. It was a wise move. I wish I had listened to him. — Ben Garrison