Submitted by: Francis Soyer
We are 5 days in on this correction and here is what we know.
The CME over the past 8 or so trading sessions has hiked margins for Silver by 84%
Goldman is chirping to sell commodities which includes metals like Silver
(So they can buy :)
Over the past 6 months this is the 3rd time Silver has breached its Volume Weighted Average Price.
(A long time to wait if you are a VWAP type like myself) chart below
Yes the CME and Futures Brokers margin hikes will and do flush out week hands which helps those who are heavily short contracts like JPM and the likes
Yes this has occured historically before when Bullion competes with Fiat Money. This happened with the famous Hunt Brothers incident. So lets just take a look at exactly what happened with the Hunt Brothers a long time ago. This morning Zero Hedge posted the original article from Playboy magazine from 1980. Here it is. To summarize this article below..when you corner an animal and it's survival is threatened it will bite and become violent. Yes JPM's and others survival is in jeapordy, yes they are protected by various agencies, yes they will bite when cornered and do everything in their power to survive and this week is no ecxeption. The difference historically this time is that dollars are in their death rattles and will not be able to save them this time. So what do we do? We buy physical silver and stay the course.
Page 1 of 19
Silverfinger
By HARRY HURT III
September Issue 1980 Playboy
IN THE SUMMER of 1979, an invisible hand reached out from an island in the Atlantic
and quietly began tightening its grip on the world’s supply of silver. The fingers of that
hand extended to London, New York, Dallas, Zurich and Jidda. But the only visible clue
to its existence was a newly formed Bermuda shell corporation called International
Metals Investment Company Ltd. That dull sounding little trading company was not just
another offshore tax scam but the operating front for a secret partnership seemingly
capable of controlling the world price and supply of silver.
Appropriately enough, two of the principals in that cosmic alliance were Saudi Arabian businessmen with
connections to the Saudi royal family. But another principal, the real genius behind the deal, was an
American oil billionaire, the head of a clan sometimes referred to as “the royal family of Texas.” Though
not quite as rich as the Saudi royalty, this man was one of the few private individuals in the world capable
of playing in the same league. A lover of intrigue, in the past he had made international headlines with his
mysterious wheeling and dealing. Before long, he would again blaze across the front pages. But for the
time being, he remained in the shadows, operating behind the corporate veil of International Metals. His
name: Nelson Bunker Hunt.
“He wins and loses millions in his everyday dealing, but he’ll search for fallen change in chair cushions.”
In that same summer, just before the price of silver, exploded, an extraordinary invitation went out from
Dallas to most of the better known Texas millionaires. The invitation informed recipients, “You, together
with your wife or husband if convenient, are cordially invited to be our guest at a very important meeting
that could help determine the destiny of civilization.” The invitation went on to promise that participants
would “hear and discuss plans and strategies that are not only having a profound moral and spiritual impact
upon many nations but are also a critical deterrent to the avalanche of evil that is threatening to engulf the
world.”
As revealed on the front of the invitation in black letters, the sponsor of that urgent conference was Here’s
Life, a branch of the controversial and archconservative Campus Crusade for Christ. The host committee
list included such luminaries as Roy Rogers, former Nixon patron W. Clement Stone, two U. S. Senators,
the cofounder of Holiday Inns and the owner of the Dallas Cowboys.
Also listed on the host committee was a scion of one of right-wing Christianity’s most prominent families-a
man whose image could hardly be called charitable. But his philanthropy had made the headlines on one
occasion: the day back in 1977 when he had publicly pledged to help raise one billion dollars for Campus Page 2 of 19
Crusade. Now, by contributing his letterhead and his money to Here’s Life, he was fulfilling his pledge. His
name: Nelson Bunker Hunt.
Silver and salvation, two apparently unrelated commodities, are vitally intertwined in the prodigious person
of Nelson Bunker Hunt. As the son of the late H. L. Hunt, the eccentric and irascible Texas oil billionaire,
Bunker is still driven to prove himself a moneymaker in his old man’s image. But his great silver play of
1979-1980, like many of his other dealings in the past decade, is not only the expression of his desire for
gain; it is also a fundamental expression of his world view, one that is usually labeled archconservative.
Like his father before him, Bunker Hunt envisions an international Communist conspiracy and the Eastern-
liberal-establishment-Rockefeller-CIA conspiracy. For reasons that are alternately well founded and
fantastical, he believes himself and his family to be victims of both. Even more fundamentally, he
possesses a vision of the apocalypse, a conviction that the world is heading down the road to doom.
True to family tradition, Bunker Hunt does not intend to sit idly by while catastrophe descends upon the
planet. For him, hoarding silver is not just his way of hedging inflation: It is also part of his attempt to
create his own independent economy, his own money. The government treasuries of the world used to be
the ones to issue currencies backed by precious metals. Like the United States, most countries have long
since ceased that practice. Bunker has been trying to revive it for himself and his silver buying partners.
Hoarding silver is part of his scheme to replace paper with something of “real” value. It is his hedge against
the “avalanche of evil” he fears is engulfing the world. Ironically, it was also what brought about a personal
and public financial apocalypse of the first order.
The story of Nelson Bunker Hunt is the story of his money. Along with his brothers and sisters, he controls
what may well be America’s largest family fortune. Since the Hunt wealth is privately held, there are no
published balance sheets for the empire as a whole. In addition, arriving at an exact determination of the
family wealth is complicated by varying appraisals that can be given to real estate and oil properties, and by
discount factors that must be figured in because of certain asset illiquidity. But according to inside sources
and those figures that are publicly available, the so-called first family of H. L. Hunt controls assets that
were worth roughly 12 to 14 billion dollars when the price of silver peaked in January of this year. The
flagship of the family wealth is Placid Oil; the world’s largest privately owned Oil Company, with reserves
worth in excess of six billion dollars. But the family also has extensive holdings in coal, real estate, cattle,
sports teams and, of course, silver.
Since silver’s crash, the family’s asset worth has depreciated to the eight-to-ten-billion-dollar range. The
Hunts have also taken on a considerable amount of debt. In addition to multibillion dollar borrowing done
in the normal course of business operations, the silver play alone has added roughly one and three quarter
billion dollars to their liabilities, which itself exceeds the amount of the much publicized Government
guaranteed loan to beleaguered Chrysler Corporation. Nevertheless, it is a good bet that these Hunts would
still come out at least three to five billion dollars ahead if all their assets and all their debts were liquidated
tomorrow.
Strictly speaking, Bunker Hunt has a personal claim on about three to six billion dollars’ worth of the
family wealth. The rest is divided among his sisters, Margaret Hunt Hill and Caroline Schoellkopf, his
mentally ill brother Hassie and his two active brothers, W. Herbert and Lamar. The major parts of Bunker’s
personal holdings are a 20 percent share of Placid Oil, which is owned by his trust; a one-third share of
Penrod Drilling, which he owns in partnership with Herbert and Lamar; at least 50 percent of the family’s
more than 100,000,000 ounces of silver, which he owns in partnership with Herbert; a sizable share of the
family’s choice real estate holdings; and nearly 1000 thoroughbred race horses. Bunker also carries a
considerable portion of the family’s debt, including an estimated $500,000,000 worth incurred as a result of
his silver play. Page 3 of 19
While his individual holdings make him the richest (if not the most liquid) of H. L. Hunt’s heirs, they
represent only a fraction of the total wealth at his command. All his family’s holdings operate beneath the
umbrella of Hunt Energy Corporation. Each of Bunker’s four active siblings sits on the board of directors
of Hunt Energy, and each has his or her own bailiwick. But the chairman of Hunt Energy and the leader of
the family is Nelson Bunker Hunt.
The successor to old H. L.’s myth as well as his money, Bunker is the kind of Texas character who is often
described as “larger than life,” then is pigeon holed in the smallest of stereotypes. He has been compared to
the obstinately independent Jett Rink of Edna Ferber’s Giant and to the unremittingly evil J. R. Ewing of
the CBS television series Dallas. In a slightly kinder comparison, someone once said that he was “like Burl
Ives playing Bunker Hunt in a Tennessee Williams play.” In light of his recent silver exploits, however, it
might be more appropriate to describe him as an Ian Fleming character come to life: Nelson Bunker Hunt is
Silverfinger.
The truly fascinating thing about him, of course, is that he is a character no novelist could invent. Like his
father, Bunker is a man who believes that the rules that apply to ordinary people simply do not apply to
him. But he does not smoke or drink and he does his gambling at the office, not at the card table or the
bettors’ windows at the racetrack. Although he wins and loses millions in his everyday wheeling and
dealing, he will search for fallen change in the cushions of chairs and couches as feverishly as if he were
searching for the world’s largest silver vein. He lives in a French provincial mansion in the most exclusive
section of Dallas, but he drives a seven-year-old Cadillac and flies commercial airlines-usually tourist class.
He has been known to negotiate to the last penny on conventional oil deals (“He doesn’t just want to make
a good deal for both sides, he wants the other guy to bleed,” says one former associate), but he has
committed himself to such non conventional projects as an expedition to find Noah’s ark, an attempt to
salvage the Titanic and a venture in manufacturing two passenger helicopters that literally never got off the
ground. He has been photographed with the Queen of England, has done business with Saudi royalty and
heads of state all over the world but is down home enough to talk with horse trainers and ranch hands as if
he were their next door neighbor.
“H. L. could find more oil with a road map than Bunker could find with a platoon of geologists.”
Time and again, Bunker has echoed the almost wacky anti-Semitism formerly attributed to his father. He
jokingly refers to one of his lawyers as “Super Jew” and recently told a reporter that he was not prejudiced
against Jews but added, “They are a little different, like a Chinaman or whatever is different; you do have
to say that.” One of those differences, in Bunker’s view, is intelligence. He definitely believes that Jews are
smarter than everyone else, and he is not above using their smarts when it is to his business advantage. As
he told one associate. “Never look a gift Jew in the mouth.” Despite such retrograde sentiments, one of
Bunker’s very best friends in Dallas is M. B. Rudman, a flamboyant Jewish oilman who wears flashy
clothes and plumed hats and runs an exercise ranch often populated by attractive young ladies.
Unlike his prolific father, Bunker does not have any secret families. He and his wife, Caroline, have four
children, three grandchildren and a rather prudish social image. However, former aides and acquaintances
confirm that he definitely has an eye for the ladies, and he has been seen in the company of such lovelies as
actress Ursula Andress.
Bunker’s most obvious excess is food. In the past few years, he has ballooned to as much as 300 pounds,
but he continues to indulge in favorite delights such as cheeseburgers, chocolate milk, pies and, most of all,
ice cream. But despite his hefty size and his tendency to be a heavy sleeper, he is full of energy and is
remarkably light on his feet; he tries (with varying success) to maintain a regimen of jogging and
racquetball.
He runs his empire with the help of a vice president who is a former FBI agent. He does not, however,
travel with a bodyguard and he lists both his home and his office telephone numbers in the Dallas directory. Page 4 of 19
Asked about his apparent casualness, he replies, “Why should I worry? Worrying is for people with strong
intellect or weak character.”
Although he sometimes comes off as a fat, squinty eyed bumbler, he is sharp and crafty and gifted with the
same natural mathematical mind his father had. He can, for example, reel off the bloodlines and racing
statistics of his horses and the depths and production figures of his oil wells as if he were reading from a
book. He also has extraordinary bursts of creative vision. “Bunker has flashes just like the old man used to
have,” says one family member. “Sometimes he’s brilliant. The rest of the time you wonder whether he’s
really there with you or not.”
Excited by those ventures that offer big risks and big rewards, he has both his father’s gambling instinct
and his unquenchable drive to acquire and acquire until he dominates whatever field he is in. As a former
colleague remarked in reference to Bunker’s dealings in everything from horses to silver, “He doesn’t just
want some of it. He wants it all.”
Central to Bunker’s motivation is the view of money he inherited from his old man. “Money,” he once said
in an interview, “never really meant anything to me. It was just something that if you wanted to spend it,
you would have it. My father never really cared about money, either. It was just sort of how they kept the
score in life, in business.”
Demonstrating proficiency as a moneymaker was a way for H. L.’s children to win their father’s fickle
attention. For that reason, Bunker and all the rest of his siblings learned at an early age to value all 100
pennies in every Hunt dollar. Their greed, such as it is, does not result from mere financial cravings but
from an emotional quest for both love and money.
In his early years, Bunker did not have an easy time getting either one. Born in El Dorado, Arkansas, on
February 22, 1926, he grew up in the shadow of his father’s legend. In addition to being a gambler, an oil
billionaire, a health fanatic and a right-wing propagandist, H. L. Hunt sired 15 children in three separate
families.
He began his first family in ordinary fashion by marrying Lyda Bunker Hunt, who was Bunker’s mother.
He also, however, began secret families with Frania Tye and Ruth Ray while he was still married to and
living with Lyda. After Lyda died, H. L. married Ruth and gave their four children his name. Driven by an
extraordinary reserve of libidinous energy, H. L. loved sex well into his later years, but he did not regard
his relationships with Frania and Ruth as mere love affairs. Rather, he very much intended them to produce
children, because he believed he carried a “genius gene.” He felt that by fathering more children, he was
doing the world a favor.
As if all that were not enough to live up to, Bunker had to compete for H. L.’s favor with his brother
Hassie. The oldest of the Hunt sons, Hassie was his father’s physical likeness and his runaway favorite.
Thanks to what H. L. regarded as a mystical ability to find oil, Hassie was a millionaire in his own right by
the age of 21. A short time after that, however, he suffered an incapacitating mental breakdown. H. L. sent
Hassie to every major treatment center in the country, then decided to risk what was considered the latest
advance in psychiatry: a prefrontal lobotomy. The lobotomy calmed Hassie down, but he has been under
24-hour care ever since.
H. L. kept on looking for a new miracle cure and another Hassie. Disappointed on both counts, he took
much of his frustration out on his next son, Bunker. When not simply ignoring him, the old man was often
finding fault, bawling him out, belittling him. By the time Bunker had begun to work at Hunt Oil on a full-
time basis, H. L. had let it be known that he thought his second son by Lyda was stupid and unfit to succeed
him. The old man then shifted his favor to Bunker’s younger brothers, Herbert and Lamar. Page 5 of 19
While H. L.’s attitude was hardly fair, Bunker did not do much to impress anyone in his early years. After
dropping out of college, he embarked on an ambitious international oil exploration program and promptly
drilled $11,000,000 worth of dry holes.
H. L. was not impressed. Appalled at Bunker’s losses, he groused that he could find more oil with a road
map than Bunker could find with a whole platoon of fancy geologists. But with a stubborn persistence that
could only have been inherited, Bunker kept right on drilling in other overseas locations. Some
$250,000,000 worth of dry holes later, he finally hit in Libya. His find was known as the Sarir Field and its
reserves were estimated at 11 to 13 billion barrels of oil. A little over half of that strike belonged to British
Petroleum, but the rest was all Bunker’s. Even at the then-depressed world price of about two dollars per
barrel, his interest was worth up to five billion dollars, or about twice as much as H. L.’s fortune.
All of a sudden, Bunker, the unfavored son, was, at least on paper, the world’s wealthiest private
individual. As a practical matter, however, he was nearly broke. All the dry holes had decimated his trust
income, and his Libyan find would not make up for it until pipelines could be built, a project that would
take several more years. In the meantime, Bunker had no choice but to suffer the humiliation of turning to
his still-skeptical father for a loan.
“Qaddafi nationalized Hunt’s holdings, saying he wanted to give America ‘a strong slap in the face.”
Eventually, though, Bunker’s Libyan production did come on stream, and he commenced a series of
worldwide business adventures culminating in his great silver play of 1979-1980. Yet with each new deal,
he still seemed bent on proving that he was a moneymaker worthy of the family name. He also seemed de-
termined to prove his allegiance to his father’s brand of politics.
Some of Bunkers money giving consisted of regular $5000 tithes to H. L.’s Facts Forum and Life Line
foundations, which produced right-wing political messages once carried on more than 400 radio stations
from coast to coast. But instead of jumping on the old man’s bandwagon full time, Bunker found an
alternative in the like-thinking John Birch Society. As its founder, Robert Welch, became a kind of
surrogate political father, Bunker became the organization’s largest contributor, with annual gifts new
estimated to be in the $250,000 range.
Like H. L., Bunker has been relatively stingy with his contributions to mainstream politicians. In 1968,
however, he set up a secret $1,000,000 trust fund to induce General Curtis LeMay to run as the Vice-
Presidential candidate on the George Wallace ticket. He counts among his mainstream political friends
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and former
Treasury Secretary John Connally.
Bunker’s interest in silver began one day at the Hunts’ Circle T ranch outside Dallas. The year was 1970
and Bunker was sitting in one of his favorite places, the kitchen, talking with a New York commodities
broker named Alvin J. Brodsky. A short, excitable man, Brodsky had flown down to Texas to make what
would turn out to be one of the most important sales pitches of his career. His method was simple but
graphic. As the cattle grazed outside, Brodsky gestured at the items in the room, the tablecloth, the utensils,
the food and he asked a single question: ‘Bunker, do you believe you’re going to have to pay more for these
things next year than you did this year?” Bunker allowed that he did. “Well, then,” Brodsky said, “you
should consider silver.”
Simplistic as it may have sounded, Brodsky’s pitch jibed perfectly with Bunker’s financial situation and his
total worldview. At the time, his Libyan oil venture had reached payout, and income was pouring in at a
peak rate in the neighborhood of $30,000,000 per year, all of it tax free. Bunker had to find a place to put it.
However, both domestic and world oil prices were at “depressed” pre embargo levels of two and three
dollars per barrel, and most of the so-called experts were saying that there were enough available foreign
and domestic reserves to meet America’s demands for decades. The per-ounce price of silver was also at a Page 6 of 19
low of about a dollar and a half, an even lower unit price than oil. But Bunker believed that silver might be
in for an enormous increase in price.
The inflationary future Brodsky illustrated at the Circle T was one main reason. Bunker personally believed
that inflation would grow worse. More generally, he believed that life on earth, politics, living standards
and population was going to grow worse too, and he saw plenty of evidence to support his view: There was
a war in Vietnam, turmoil in the Middle East and riots in American streets. In Libya, a left-wing radical
named Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi had recently deposed the king and was already making threatening
gestures at Bunker and the other American oil operators there.
Even his own personal future looked perilous. A few months before his meeting with Brodsky, a massive
embezzlement scandal erupted in his old man’s HLH food products division. Bunker and Herbert were
convinced that the culprits were their aging father’s closest aides. Unable to convince H. L., they decided
that the only way to get definitive proof was by wire tapping the suspects. In January of 1970, one of the
private eyes the Hunts had hired to do the wire tapping was arrested for running a stop sign. Now the
Hunts’ wiretap caper was on the verge of exploding into the pre-Watergate era’s most sensational bugging
scandal.
Brodsky was not the only person who recommended silver. There were Bunker’s former prep school
roommate Ted Jansey and Dallas silver brokers Don and Scott Dial. As those and other silver bugs
reminded Bunker, it was then illegal for Americans to buy gold. That left few attractive precious metal
choices for a U. S. citizen who believed the world was going to hell in a hack. So shortly after hearing
Brodsky’s pitch, Bunker and Herbert began buying silver.
They bought slowly at first, making purchases in 5000 and 10,000 ounce “penny packets,” mostly through
Bache Halsey Stuart Shields, the commodities outfit with which Brodsky was associated. The total amount
of those investments was only a few hundred thousand dollars, small change by Hunt standards. The initial
results, however, were of the sort Bunker and his brother could readily appreciate. Between 1970 and 1973,
silver rose to about three dollars an ounce.
Meanwhile, both the world situation and Bunker’s personal situation worsened. In what turned out to be a
prelude to the Arab oil embargo that fall, Qaddafi nationalized Bunker’s Libyan holdings in May of 1973,
announcing that he wanted to give America “a strong slap in the face.” In January of that year, Bunker and
Herbert were indicted for illegal wire-tapping. Charging that the Justice Department had reneged on a
secret deal not to prosecute them, they claimed that the CIA had induced Justice to go ahead with the
prosecution anyway because the agency was angered by Bunker’s refusal to place an agent in his Libyan
operations. They also alleged that Paul Rothermel, their father’s former security chief, had been granted
immunity from prosecution in the HLH food-embezzlement case because he was a Government agent
spying on the family.
Nevertheless, the Justice Department continued to press its case against the Hunts. Bunker and Herbert
were eventually indicted on charges of obstruction of justice for allegedly offering payments to their private
eyes to keep their involvement in the wire tapping a secret.
With the world apparently crumbling all around him, Bunker decided to go heavily into silver. This time,
he and his brother Herbert, aided by second family in-law Randy Kreiling, a commodities expert, began
buying into the market with what would soon come to be known as the typical Hunt style. The key
elements in their strategy were size, secrecy and surprise. Working through Bache and a variety of other
brokers, they purchased not just penny packets but also millions and millions of ounces. Their first huge
order was a 20,000,000-ounce December 1973 contract. Other big orders followed, and by early 1974, the
Hunts had accumulated contracts totaling 55,000,000 ounces, or about seven to nine percent of the total
estimated world supply. That gave them more silver than anyone on earth save the governments of a few
countries and the silver exchanges themselves. Page 7 of 19
“Since the Hunts were taking delivery on their contracts, they had to put up roughly $160,000,000.”
Bunker and Herbert placed their orders with more than the usual concern for confidentiality. Secret buying
strategies are common in the commodity futures markets, where leaks of a big purchase can send prices
skyrocketing. But most silver traders trade only in paper, not actual metal. The Hunts, however, were
taking delivery on their contracts, all 55,000,000 ounces’ worth. That meant they had to put up roughly
$160,000,000 in cash. Taking delivery on all that silver also meant that they had to store it somewhere. And
that, in turn, necessitated the second and more secret phase of their silver buying scheme.
Most of the details of the Hunts’ great silver roundup are still secret, but sources familiar with the operation
say it began with a shoot-out at the Circle K ranch. The property of H. L.’s second family, the Circle K is a
2500-acre spread located east of Dallas. As straw boss for the operation, Kreiling recruited a dozen
cowboys from the Circle K by holding a shooting match to see who were the best marksmen. The winners
received a special assignment: riding shotgun on the Hunts’ hoard of silver.
With guns in hand, the Circle K cowboys flew up to New York aboard three chartered 707s. The planes
came from a nationally known charter company, but the name of the firm was covered with tape so that the
only visible identifying marks were the planes’ registration numbers. The aircraft landed at La Guardia in
the dead of night. A short time after their arrival, a convoy of armored trucks arrived from the New York
Commodity Exchange warehouse. Inside were 40,000,000 ounces of silver bullion. The transfer took place
almost wordlessly. There was no joking or grabassing, just serious loading. When the planes were full, the
Cowboys climbed in and the pilots got clearance for takeoff. Their destination: Zurich.
Upon their arrival in Switzerland, the Hunt planes were met by another convoy of armored trucks. The
cowboys and the armed guards transferred the silver from the planes to the trucks. Then the bullion was
driven to six secret storage locations in Zurich. Five of them were in bank vaults, among them the vault of
Credit Suisse. However, the Hunts’ silver hoard was too much for the available bank vaults to handle. The
excess bullion had to be stored in the coffers of a Swiss warehouse named Freidlager.
The costs of that transatlantic storage operation were enormous. Chartering the three 707s involved nearly
$200,000. On top of that, storage costs for silver ran on the average of a half Cent per ounce per mouth. For
the 40,000,000 ounces stashed in Europe anti the 15,000,000 ounces still its exchange warehouses in
Chicago and New Jersey, the annual storage charges amounted to some $3,000,000. Still, flying the bullion
to Switzerland was cheaper than taking it home to Texas, where the Hunts would have had to pay a four
and-a-quarter percent franchise tax to the state. More important, having his silver locked away in Swiss
banks added to what Bunker wanted out of the deal most of all: a sense of security about his wealth.
For all his precautions, Bunker could not keep his silver buying scheme a secret for long. In the spring of
1974, word hit the silver trading floors of the world that a mysterious Texan named Hunt had just taken
delivery on more silver than any single buyer had purchased in recent memory. The price rose to over six
dollars ‘per ounce. Veteran traders were in a panic. Even as they frantically asked one another, “Who’s
Nelson Bunker Hunt” they whispered that the man was about to corner the market.
In most modern markets, talk of a corner would have been dismissed as just that, talk. The classic definition
of a precious metals corner is when an Individual holds enough bullion and enough futures contracts to
have a virtual monopoly on the total supply, and thus effective control of the price of both bullion and
futures, since anyone who wanted the metal would have to come to him. Few people or groups have the
skill or the financial resources to pull one off. Indeed, the last time anyone cornered the silver market was
when the Bank of England accomplished the feat in 1717. As the veteran traders knew, however, silver was
potentially more vulnerable titan other commodities. Unlike gold, it has a wide range of industrial uses
(most notably for photographic film), as well as a value in jewelry making. Annual production in 1974 was
only about 245,000,000 ounces, while annual consumption was about 450,000,000 ounces. Exactly how
much the total world supply amounted to was anybody’s guess. Estimates ranged from 600,000,000 ounces
to 800,000,000 ounces. Of that total, only 200,000,000 ounces was believed to be available for delivery Page 8 of 19
against silver futures contracts. While silver from tea sets, silverware and other sources had a way of
coining out of the woodwork in times of high prices, many traders believed that it would take a lot less titan
200,000,000 ounces to corner the silver commodities market. But how much less? Had Bunker Hunt found
the magic formula? Was he now ready to cash in?
In April of 1974, Bunker stopped in New York to visit the floor of the Commodity Exchange for the first
time in his life. When he walked onto the floor, all activity came to a halt. The traders chopped what they
were doing and simply stared at the overweight, spectacled Texan in the cheap blue suit. Later that day,
Bunker granted a rare interview to a reporter from the financial journal Barron’s. Although he politely
refused to reveal the size of his silver holdings, Bunker did give the world a glimpse of his long term
intentions. As he put it in typically twisted syntax, ‘‘Just about anything you buy, rather than paper, is
better. You’re bound to come out ahead, in the long pull. If you don’t like gold, use silver, or diamonds or
copper, but something. Any damn fool can run a printing press.
On November 29, 1974, H. L. Hunt died at the age of 85. His death prompted a three way family feud that
would put the petty bickering of television’s Ewing clan to shame. In his will, H. L. left all of his stock in
Hunt Oil-about 80 percent of the company’s shares-to his second wife, Ruth; and he named 31-year-old
Ray L. Hunt, his son by Ruth as his sole independent executor.
While many of their friends thought the will was fair, Bunker and his siblings were furious. The first family
hail already inherited the bulk of H. L’s billions through their trusts. Hunt Oil still serviced the accounts of
the first family- owned companies such as Placid Oil and Penrod Drilling, but the oil and real-estate
properties still technically a part of Hunt Oil amounted to only $300000000, or about one tenth of what the
first family had already gotten. Still, $300,000,000 was $300,000,000. What’s more, the first family
objected to the will on status grounds. They (lid not like the second family and felt that the naming of their
illegitimately born half brother as sole executor had bumped them into second place.
Finally, Bunker and Herbert informed Ray that the first family had decided to go their own separate way.
Bunker and the others moved their offices from the Hunt Oil headquarters on the 29th floor of the First
National Bank Building to the 25th floor. There they formed a new parent corporation called Hunt Energy.
Shortly after the first and second families split, Frania Tye Lee, the mother of H. L.’s third and still secret
family, filed suit for a larger share of the estate. Her children filed a separate suit to be recognized as the
legitimate heirs of H. L. Hunt. Her suit went to trial in Shreveport, Louisiana, Federal court in January
1978. After five days of sensational testimony, the families settled with Mrs. Lee for $7,500,000. Before
the final papers could be signed, Mrs. Lee’s sons began objecting to the agreement. The matter is
unresolved to this day.
Amid all that family feuding, Bunker faced the unsettling prospect of a jury trial for wire-tapping. No
sooner had he formed Hunt Energy than he had to make contingency plans for running the family empire in
the event of a conviction. He decided to take another stab at improving his silver position.
By this time, Bunker and Herbert had owned their 55,000,000 ounces for about a year, but the price was
languishing around four dollars. Bunker still had confidence in the long-term outlook for the metal, but he
was now in an ever tightening cash squeeze. He believed, however, that if he could get another big buyer to
join him in the silver market, prices might begin to rise again, maybe even catch fire.
So in early March of 1975, Bunker left Dallas with a tourist-class plane ticket and high hopes of finding a
kindred spirit in the Middle East. When he arrived in London, he and an aide changed to reserved first-class
seats on a flight for Tehran. That was not usually Bunker’s custom, flying first class, but on this particular
day, he flew first class for a very good reason. When he arrived at the lariat airport, he was being met by his
friend Maimed Reza Palaver, the shah’s brother, and he wanted to make the best possible impression. He
had a business proposal for the Iranians: He wanted them to buy silver. Page 9 of 19
Upon his arrival in Tehran, Bunker was ushered via chauffeur driven limousine to an appointment with the
Iranian finance minister, Ansari. Butt despite his entree to the Palaver family, Bunker was unable to get a
firm commitment from them to buy silver.
Choking and headachy from the Tehran smog, Bunker caught the next
plane out, which happened to be bound for Zurich. Along the way, he decided that he might as well go on
up to Paris and see his racehorses. Then he got another idea: Why not try the Saudis?
When he landed in Zurich, Bunker sent his aide to telephone the family’s Middle East expert in New York.
The expert’s name was Benjamin Harrison Freedman. A friend and contemporary of Bunker’s late father,
Freedman was a longtime right-wing activist. As such, he was typical of the Hunt family’s informal brain
trust, an amazing assortment of mostly archconservative and often slightly eccentric wizards of sciences
and pseudo sciences ranging from economics to climatology.
Freedman advised Bunker to slow down. All the Middle East was aware of his trip to Tehran. To fly right
over to Saudi Arabia would only offend King Faisal by making him seem second to the shah. Freedman
urged Bunker to fly back to the United States first, and he would then make an appointment for him to see
the king in about two weeks. That way, Bunker could show the proper respect for the king by coming
directly from his own home country.
Bunker followed Freedman’s advice. A meeting was arranged for three weeks thence. Bunker went on to
Paris to see his horses and flew back to the U. S. Then on March 25, King Faisal was assassinated.
Faisal’s deaths and the Hunt Brothers’ upcoming wire tapping trial brought Bunker’s silver play to a halt.
Grimly, he and Herbert completed their contingency plans for the worst. With the coaching of their
attorney Phil Hirschkop, they also affected a reunion with the second family. When they arrived in
Lubbock for the Start o the trial, the two families were flashing beauty contest smiles, giving gush
interviews to the press chatting with use locals like new neighbors and generally acting like the most
harmonious collection of kinfolk in America.
When the trial began in September, the Hunts pleaded ignorance of the law. Their excuse was that a new
wiretap statute had just gone into effect and the Watergate scandal had not occurred at the time of their
alleged misdeeds. Secondly, the brothers claimed they had no evil intent in wire tapping only a desire to
protect their aging father from the thieves within his empire. The jury bought it all and acquitted the
brothers in record time.
Bunker’s performance lived rip to his best standards. Though visibly concerned before the trial, he actually
dozed off at one point in the proceedings. After the trial, he was fully awake and noticeably relieved, and
his first comment was to point up the exorbitant costs of Government harassment. In the five year legal
battle leading to their acquittal, he and his brother had spent an estimated $ 1,000,000 in legal fees. “If
Herbert and I had been just ordinary people,” Bunker observed. “We could have been in real Trouble.”
Following the wire tapping trial, Bunker was still in a cash squeeze and silver was still his biggest problem.
But he refused to sell out or sit on the sidelines while other deals passed him by. Unable to get the price of
silver to move, he decided to borrow against his bullion and invest that cash in other big commodity plays.
Such a strategy involved a double risk: If silver kept declining and his other plays also failed, he would be
in more of a pinch than ever. But then, big risks were just the thing that got the Hunt blood stirring. So,
with his silver at a standstill, he hunched a family invasion of other commodities markets.
One was a lucrative but tempestuous bout in soybeans futures (in which Bunker was rightly accused by the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission of violating the 3,000,000-bushel limit by any individual or
group). The Hunts also began to focus on another area of the market. The initial object of the quest was
sugar; the immediate target was Great Western United, the nation’s largest sugar refiner. ‘The deal had
begun shortly before H. L.’s death as a spur of the moment $3,000,000 stock investment. Then the Hunts Page 10 of 19
discovered that Great Western was plagued with management problems and, in late 1974, decided to buy
61 percent control of the company by laying out $30,000,000 more. All of a sudden, the Hunts found
themselves with a publicly owned corporation and all sorts of disclosure problems they had never had to
put up with in the family’s privately held enterprises. To make matters worse, the bottom dropped out of
the sugar market during the first year of the takeover, and Great Western revenues declined some
$100,000,000.
Once again, Bunker turned to silver. Convinced that he could reverse some of Great Western’s losses by
getting the company into precious metals, he had it sell its sugar futures and start buying silver futures. By
the spring of 1976, Great Western’s trading company was out of all commodities except silver. Late that
year, Great Western took delivery on some 20,000,000 ounces of bullion.
At that point, Bunker concocted one of his most cosmic schemes: a plan to trade that silver to the
Philippines through Great Western. The Philippines would then send Great Western raw sugar for its
refineries and exchange the silver for Saudi crude. With the Arabs into the silver market for $100,000,000
worth, the price of silver would rise, Great Western would have sugar, the Philippines would have oil and
all sides would be happy.
Herbert went over to the Philippines and got a favorable response from President Marcos. But the
International Monetary Fund, which lent a great deal of money to the Philippines to buy crude, said it
would not recognize silver as part of the country’s national resources. In effect, the IMF ruling meant that
the 20,000,000 ounces of bullion would be worthless in trying to get loans. With that, Bunker’s scheme fell
through. Great Western sold its bullion in early 1977 for $88,500,000, thus offsetting a substantial part of
the revenues lost due to the collapse of the sugar market. Still, the company continued to operate in the red.
After the sale, the Hunt brothers took Great Western out of the silver futures market, but not out of silver.
Now they began using their newly acquired public company to go after one of the most precious of the
precious metal prizes: the largest silver mine in America. Owning the nation’s biggest silver mine would be
like the crown on the Hunts’ silver empire. As a working mine, it was a productive asset in its own right.
What’s more, its estimated reserves of over 30,000,000 ounces would give the Hunts a base lode in the U.
S. to complement their stash in Europe. Finally, as the owners of an operating mine, they would qualify as
commercial users of silver and would thus be exempt from the trading restrictions applicable to futures
market speculators. Although that would later seem to be a most important benefit, it was a factor that the
Hunts did not consider at the time or so they said.
Located near Kellogg, Idaho, the Big Creek mine was owned by a publicly traded company called Sunshine
Mining. In the spring of 1977, Bunker and Herbert launched an attempt to take over Sunshine Mining
through Great Western. Sunshine’s management opposed the take-over, and a complicated flurry of
litigation ensued. When the dust settled, the Hunt brothers emerged with 28 percent of the stock for
$19,500,000 and a settlement agreement stipulating that they could acquire the rest of Sunshine’s stock at
no less than $15 a share, or about $60,000,000. Thus assured that the nation’s largest silver mine would
soon be theirs, the Hunt brothers installed a lieutenant, G. Michael Boswell, the former president of Great
Western United, by now renamed Hunt International Resources Corporation (HIRCO), as the new president
of Sunshine. Bunker and Herbert then turned to other things-such as figuring out how to buy more silver.
Given what was happening in the world and the ever-increasing price of gold, Bunker was now convinced
more than ever that the price of silver was destined to catch fire soon. Rather than ease his cash squeeze by
selling off his bullion (a move that would make him miss out on any upcoming price Increases), he set out
once again to find a silver buying partner.
This time, Bunker’s share of the Hunt luck came through he got some interest from the Saudis. What first
caught their attention was a letter Bunker sent to 50 wealthy Saudis in early 1978 explaining why he
believed silver was bound for a big increase in price. According to sources familiar with the deal in the Page 11 of 19
making, however, the actual Hunt-Saudi connection came not from the letter but from the hand of the
ubiquitous John Connally.
In February of 1978, just as he was gearing up for his Presidential race, Connally introduced Bunker to
Sheik Khaled Ben Mahfouz, a Connally client and business partner whose family contacts the National
Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia in Jidda. Like most other wealthy Saudis, Mahfouz had connections to
the royal family, but he was not royalty himself. Rather, as a sheik, not a prince, he was one of that class of
Saudis who had risen to wealth at the’ pleasure and munificence of the king.
Connally and Mahfouz had established a symbiotic business relationship. Mahfouz had purchased an
interest in the Main Bank in Houston, an institution in which Connally happened to own a financial stake.
The man the sheik had purchased his interest from was Saudi wheeler-dealer Ghaith Pharaon. The
flamboyant Pharaon was Mahfouz’ friend and Connally’s client, but he was also the new owner of a stake
in Bert Lance’s National Bank of Georgia. Connally feared that even a remote association with Lance
would damage his Presidential hopes. Mahfouz bought out Pharaon’s interest in the Main Bank to save
embarrassment for Connally. About the same time, Connally acquired an interest in Mahfouz’ bank in
Saudi Arabia.
By bringing Bunker Hunt and Mahfouz together in the winter of 1978, Connally was performing one of his
most fabled functions, that of deal maker. The introductory meeting took place in Washington after Bunker
and Connally completed negotiations on a New Zealand deal the Hunts were in. No final commitment was
made at the meeting, but plans were made to explore the deal further.
Then, just about the time a deal with the Saudis finally seemed to be in the offing, trouble developed back
in Dallas. Ironically, part of the problem came from the fact that the price of silver finally began to move of
its own accord. Responding at last to inflation and increases in other precious metal prices, silver rose from
four dollars an ounce to six dollars an ounce by January 1979. Prices continued a slow but steady climb
toward the eight dollar mark through the spring and early summer.
Meanwhile, G. Michael Boswell and the other young Hunt lieutenants in Sunshine Mining’s management
turned hostile to the scheduled Hunt takeover. Boswell and his men based their opposition on both personal
and financial grounds. Complaining of heavy handed treatment by HIRCO’s managers, the Sunshine men
claimed that the $15 per share takeover price mentioned in the settlement agreement with the Hunts was a
floor, not a ceiling. Boswell and his group made it clear they thought the price for Sunshine was now too
low in light of the recent trends in silver prices. They wrote Sunshine shareholders a strongly worded letter
warning them, “Don’t Give Sunshine Away.”
To the Hunt brothers, the Boswell letter was an act of high treason. He was, after all, their fair-haired boy.
A bitter round of accusations and litigation followed, with the Hunts unleashing their private eyes to poke
into the private lives of Boswell and the other Sunshine boys. But Boswell’s warning had its intended effect
on Sunshine stockholders. After an unsuccessful tender offer, the Hunts finally dropped their takeover
attempt and sold their shares in Sunshine back to a management trust. A few weeks later, they bought up
the outstanding 40 percent of HIRCO still owned by the public and took the company private.
In losing Sunshine, the Hunts lost the great silver mine they had lusted for. But their most sensational silver
play was only beginning. In the summer of 1979, just after the dust settled from the shootout over Sunshine
Mining, Bunker and Herbert completed negotiations for their silver buying partnership with the Saudis. On
July first, the partners incorporated a Bermuda based trading company called International Metals
Investment Company, Ltd. The firm’s registration listed four principals: Nelson Bunker Hunt, William
Herbert Hunt, Sheik Mohammed Aboud Al-Amoudi and Sheik Ali Bin Mussalem. International Metals’
purpose was to invest in gold, platinum and, most of all, silver.
The participation of the two sheiks apparently resulted from Bunker’s Connally connection. Like their
mutual friend Mahfouz, both Al-Amoudi and Mussalem were nouveau riche Arabs from Jidda. Both men Page 12 of 19
had made their money in real estate when the late King Faisal parceled out some of the land in the kingdom
to allow sheiks outside the royal family to share in Saudi Arabia’s prosperity. Sources familiar with the two
sheiks indicate that Al-Amoudi was worth about $300,000,000, while Mussalem was worth about
$100,000,000. Although such wealth made them rich men by most standards, it hardly put them in a league
with the Hunts. What’s more, by investing in silver, Al-Amoudi and Mussalem were defying conventional
Saudi business wisdom, which held that investing in precious metals put petrodollars back in the hands of
the West.
The equalizer, according to several accounts, was the sheiks’ connection to the Saudi royal family. Known
by conservative Arab financial men as high fliers, the two sheiks were not among the king’s top advisors.
However, both Al-Amoudi and Mussalem did know fellow Jidda resident Prince Faisal ben Abdallah al
Saoud. Prince Faisal happened to be the son of Prince Abdallah, the commander of the Saudi National
Guard and a member of the kingdom’s ruling triumvirate. Like Bunker Hunt, Abdallah was a lover of fine
horses and a billionaire many times over. He could definitely afford to play in the same game with the
Hunts. But, like other highly placed Saudis, Abdallah did not like having his name openly connected with
business ventures, especially controversial ones. Although neither Abdallah’s nor Faisal’s name at any time
appeared on the registry of International Metals, several sources have suggested that they were the real
money behind Al-Amoudi and Mussalem.
The exact size of the International Metals Investment partnership is still secret, but, as subsequent events
would prove, it was large enough to buy over 90,000,000 ounces of silver bullion. At an average price of
ten dollars an ounce, such a hoard could be purchased (on margin) via silver futures contracts for an initial
cash outlay of some $45,000,000. But to take delivery on the bullion, as the partners intended to do, some
$900,000,000 in cash would be required. As 50-50 partners with the Saudis, Bunker and Herbert would be
responsible for putting up roughly $450,000,000.
How, given their cash squeeze, did the Hunts plan on coming up with that kind of money? The answer is
contained in the question. The Hunts had some money free from the sale of their Sunshine stock. More
important, they also had the 42,000,000 ounces’ worth of futures contracts they had been rolling forward
for the preceding several months. Those contracts settled daily. For every dollar an ounce increase, another
dollar an ounce was credited to the Hunts’ cash accounts. Since the price of silver had been rising slowly
but steadily since the first of the year, the Hunts were now building up sizable surpluses in their accounts.
The value of the 55,000,000 ounces of bullion the brothers had bought back in 1973 and 1974 was also
appreciating. With some 15,000,000 ounces of that bullion still stored in U. S. vaults, the Hunts also had
handy collateral for cash loans. In effect, they could use their silver to buy more silver, literally pyramiding
bars on top of bars.
Although the timing of their various loans is not clear as of this writing, it seems clear that the Hunt's
received loans both for buying silver and later, for paying off some of their debts. One loan was for
$40,000,000 and was made by a syndicate including the Bache Group, Continental Illinois Bank and the
Royal Bank of Canada. Another loan was for $233,000,000 and was made by the First National Bank of
Chicago, Irving Trust and eight other large banks. In addition, the New York branch of Swiss Bank lent the
Hunts $200,000,000 and Citibank lent $17,500,000. While the conditions of those loans have yet to be
made clear, they were apparently made in defiance of Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volckers
request that banks not make loans for commodity speculation.
The Hunts formed a new subsidiary for their International Metals Investment partnership, calling it,
appropriately enough, Profit Investment. They chose the name not only for the obvious meaning but also
because of a long-lasting family superstition that names beginning with the letter P and containing six
letters-names such as Placid and Penrod brought good luck.
The Hunt-Saudi silver buying began in mid-July, and began big. Working through both the Commodity
Exchange (Comex) in New York and the Chicago Board of Trade (C.B.O.T.), the group purchased some
8600 silver futures contracts, the equivalent of 43,000,000 ounces. All of the contracts were due for
delivery that fall. Page 13 of 19
About the time the Hunts and the Saudis started buying; several other big buyers entered the market, too.
One was Naji Robert Nahas, a Lebanese Arab living in Brazil who owned 23 multinational companies and
had made many millions speculating in coffee futures. Nahas and the other big purchasers were identified
only by corporate front names and addresses in Geneva and the Bahamas. Like Nahas, those mysterious
foreign buyers placed most of their buy orders through Conti Commodity Services; together, the Conti
group got into the market for another 42,000,000 ounces’ worth of silver futures contracts. Still other
foreign buyers, many of them Kuwaitis and Bahrainis, also got into silver on the European exchanges via a
company called Gulf Investment, which traded through the Arab consortium bank in Paris.
The identity of the new big buyers remained a secret through August and September, but what happened to
the price of silver did not. Having risen slowly but steadily all year, the price suddenly jumped from eight
dollars to over $16 in only two months’ time. Part of the price explosion was undoubtedly attributable to
the voracious demand of the big buyers. But, as the CFTC itself later observed, the demand was also con-
sistent with the worldwide demand for precious metals as a hedge against inflation and unstable politics.
Gold prices had already been surging upward for months. Silver had remained relatively under priced, but
was catching up. On October third, it closed at $17.88 per ounce.
Both the Comex and the C.B.O.T. flew into a panic. Trading frenzied then dried up as small investors
scrambled for cover amid rumors that the new big buyers included the Hunts. Exchange officials grew
increasingly anxious. The big buyers kept buying futures, but they also kept taking delivery as their old
contracts matured. The warehouses of the two exchanges held only 120,000,000 ounces of bullion, and that
amount was traded in the month of October alone. The Hunt-Saudi partnership itself took delivery on some
40,000,000 ounces. Combined with the Hunts’ earlier purchases, this gave the group ownership of 62 per-
cent of the stock in the Comex warehouse and 26 percent of the stock in the Board of Trade’s vaults.
International Metals also traded some of its futures for another 28,000,000 ounces of silver not held by the
U. S. exchanges’ vaults. Conditions looked ripe for a “squeeze”: that situation where there is simply not
enough bullion available to meet the strict delivery terms of the contracts.
At that point, the CFTC and the officials of the two exchanges decided to have a little talk with the Hunts.
Explaining that they feared a squeeze, the exchange officials asked them if they would consider selling
some of their silver. The brothers’ answer was no. What was more, they said, they intended to keep buying
silver and to keep taking delivery on it. They thought silver was still a good buy, even at the new high
prices. Besides, as Bunker put it with typical understatement. “If you sell, you get into a tax problem.”
On top of all that, Bunker really did believe in silver as a long-term investment, the underpinnings of a new
economy. He did not say that in so many words to the CFTC men and the exchange officials, but he did
give them a glimpse of his basic apocalyptic vision when he revealed a previously undisclosed feature of
his silver play: the fact that he was moving his metal to Europe. This time, he did not fly the bullion
overseas in chartered jets with cowboy guards. As he told the CFTC, Bunker simply traded 9,000,000
ounces’ worth of metal he held in Chicago and New York exchange warehouses for an equal amount of
bullion held by other traders in London and Zurich. The reason? As he explained to the CFTC and the
exchange officials, he feared that the U. S. Government might expropriate silver from Americans just as it
had expropriated gold back in the Thirties.
But Bunker’s assurances that he was willing to cooperate as much as possible apparently mollified the
CFTC officials; the C.B.O.T., however, concluded that it was time to act. In a move aimed directly at the
Hunts and the other big buyers, the Board of Trade raised the margin requirement and declared that silver
traders would be limited to 3,000,000 ounces of futures contracts. Traders with more than that would have
to divest themselves of their excess futures holdings by mid-February 1980.
With that, the battle lines were drawn. Bunker let it be publicly known that he thought the C.B.O.T. was
changing the rules in the middle of the game, and vowed to fight the limits all the way. Privately, he
regarded the C.B.O.T.’s action as another conspiracy against him by the Eastern establishment. And for
once, he had a good prima-facie case. Page 14 of 19
The boards of both the Chicago and the New York exchanges were composed not only of “outside”
directors but also of representatives of the major, usually Eastern-based brokerage houses. Later testimony
would reveal that nine of the 23 Comex board members held short contracts on 38,000,000 ounces of
silver. With their 1.88 billion dollar collective interest in having the price go down, it is easy to see why
Bunker did not view them as objective regulators. At the same time, though, the C.B.O.T. restrictions made
Bunker even more bullish on silver, because, as he put it, “they show a silver shortage exists.”
Bunker appeared to be right. Through November and December, the price of silver rose faster than ever. By
the last day of 1979, the price reached an astronomical $34.45 an ounce. Meanwhile, the Hunts’ silver
holdings kept increasing. By the end of December, the Hunts and their Arab partners held 90,300,000
ounces of bullion that the CFTC knew about and another 40,000,000 ounces the Hunts had stashed in
Europe. The Hunt group also held about 90,000,000 ounces worth of silver futures, most of them due for
delivery in March on the Comex in New York.
By this time, the CFTC became concerned that the silver positions held by the Hunts and the Conti group
were “too large relative to the size of the U. S. and world silver markets.” Subscribing to the philosophy
that the futures market was not a substitute for the cash market, the commission determined that the time
had come to stop Bunker’s perverse buying spree. A meeting to decide what to do was set for January 8,
1980.
Then the Comex stepped in. On January seventh, the exchange announced new position limits restricting
traders to no more than 10,000,000 ounces’ worth of futures contracts. The effective date of the limits was
set for February 18.
The day after the Comex announcement, the CFTC announced that it was backing the exchanges new
limits.
Bunker was incensed. “I am not a speculator. I am not a market squeezer,” he protested. “I am just an
investor and holder in silver.” Taking the offensive, he accused the exchanges and the Government of
destroying the U. S. silver market by changing the rules in the middle of the game. “The market will move
to Europe,” he predicted ominously. “The silver market in this country is a thing of the past.”
Strangely enough, the price of silver fell only one day in the wake of the Comex announcement, then
started climbing even higher. Part of the reason for the continued price spiral, according to an after-the-fact
analysis by the CFTC, was that Bunker kept buying silver. On January 14 and 16, the Hunts made
agreements to take future delivery on 32,500,000 ounces of silver (mostly in London) at various dates that
spring. The largest of those contracts were with Englehard Minerals. On January 17, silver hit a record high
of $50 an ounce.
Bunker could hardly be incensed about that. On that one day, the worth of the Hunts’ silver bullion
holdings was nearly four and a half billion dollars. Since most of that silver had been acquired at less than
ten dollars an ounce, they had a profit of over three and a half billion dollars. Bunker and Herbert had made
nearly as much money in the past six months as their late father had made in his entire lifetime, at least on
paper. Of course, if Bunker actually sold all that bullion, he would face enormous tax consequences. The
trick now was to figure a way to utilize those huge gains without having them decimated by the taxman.
As Bunker pondered that, the exchanges decided to impose their most stringent restriction yet. On January
21, the Comex announced that trading would be limited to liquidation orders only. There would be no more
futures buying. The game was closing down.
The next day, the price of silver plunged to $34, a drop of ten dollars in a single day. It stabilized shortly
after that, and remained in the mid to high 30s for the rest of the month. But in February, the price began to
slide downward again. By that time, silver was literally coming out of the woodwork. In response to the
new high prices, old ladies had been selling their tea sets. Families had been hocking their silverware. Coin Page 15 of 19
collectors had been divesting themselves of their collections. In January and February alone, an estimated
16,000,000 ounces of silver coins and an additional 6,000,000 ounces of scrap silver had come onto the
market. With the price of silver now dropping, some of those small sellers and small investors began
complaining to the CFTC about the exchange restrictions.
Bunker, meanwhile, remained as bullish as ever. “Why would anyone want to sell silver to get dollars?” he
asked in amazement. “I guess they got tired of polishing it.”
Prudently or not, Bunker practiced what he preached. In early February, the Hunts took delivery of
26,500,000 ounces of bullion from the Chicago exchange. That brought the brothers total group holdings
(including their partnership with the Arabs and their European silver stash) to slightly over 155,000,000
ounces. Instead of selling his futures, most of which were set for delivery in March, Bunker simply rolled
them forward into the months of May and September. He also bought a $4,250,000 stake in Goldfield, a
silver mining concern, and a six-and-a-half percent stake in his own silver broker, the Bache Group. In late
February, the Hunts made headlines in Dallas for an unusual precious-metals-based employee-benefits
package. The plan provided that Hunt employees could take their bonuses in silver, gold or cash, whichever
was highest at the time the benefits were paid out. That was not the act of a man who believed the price of
silver was going to crater.
Neither were the things Bunker was doing behind the scenes. In late February, with the price now hovering
in the low 30s, Bunker began another global search for a silver buying partner. Despite the recent price
slippages, the prospects looked good. The Kuwaitis and the Bahrainis in Gulf Investment had sold their
silver near the top of the market for an estimated $22,000,000 profit. Elated by their success, the group was
ready to get back in the market again. They proposed a new venture in partnership with Bunker to be called
Gulf Precious Metals. The intention of this new group was to raise another $500,000,000 to buy more
silver; of that total amount, Bunker would supply 10 to 20 percent.
There followed a series of meetings in Paris, the Persian Gulf States and Texas. One of the meetings took
place in Dallas on February 26. Among those in attendance were Mario Araktingi, a Greek Arab who
advises the Saudi royal family on investments; Mohammed Ishmael, a director of the Arab bank in Paris;
Sheik Mahfouz, the Saudi banker and Connally client; and the Hunt brothers, Bunker and Herbert. After the
gathering, the Arabs flew off to Bermuda, home base of International Metals, then turned around and went
hack to Dallas for another meeting with the Hunts.
Meanwhile, with the ready cash of Placid Oil, the Hunts were making several large nonmetal investments.
Placid bought the oil reserves of a company called Bodcaw for $190,000,000 in cash, and then purchased
$100,000,000 in stock in oil-rich Louisiana Land and Exploration Company. After that, Placid bought a 9.6
percent stake in coal-rich Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation, and then announced a $350,000,000
tender offer for the rest of the stock. Gulf Resources’ board voted against the tender and the Hunts backed
off.
Then rumors circulated that the Hunts had an even more prodigious takeover target: Texaco. Like cornering
a modern market, taking over one of the Seven Sisters was almost too absurd for most people to think
about. By one estimate, taking over the whole company would have cost ten billion dollars at prevailing
market prices. Even the Hunts, with an estimated four billion dollars in paper profits in silver, would be
hard pressed to make that kind of play. But by that time, it seemed like anything was possible for the Texas
brothers. So, while the purchases of Texaco stock by Placid were never confirmed, the rumors continued to
circulate.
At the same time, the price of silver continued to drop. On March third, it was at $35.20 an ounce; but by
March 14, it was clown to $21. One reason for the price drop was the rapidly spiraling interest rate; that not
only strengthened the dollar but also raised the cost of buying on margin. Another reason was the fact that
at January’s $50 price, there were fewer and fewer people left who could afford to buy silver. Still another Page 16 of 19
reason was the fact that world tensions had eased a bit-and the flight into precious metals as a haven from
the apocalypse finally slowed.
For Bunker and his Arab partners, the continuing price drop spelled enormous trouble. It meant, for one
thing, that the value of their already delivered silver bullion was decreasing rapidly. At $21 an ounce, the
Hunts’ silver was worth nearly two billion dollars less than what it had been worth a few weeks before.
That meant so much less collateral available for new silver buying loans. Even worse, the declining prices
meant that the Hunts had to keep coming up with more cash margin money to maintain their futures
positions, which were in the 60,000,000-ounce range. By late March, their margin calls at Bache were in
excess of $10,000,000 per day.
Still confident that silver prices would turn upward again, Bunker refused to sell out. But despite his
optimism, prices continued to drop, and the margin calls continued to mount. Everything finally came to a
head on March 25, 1980. Bache called Dallas that afternoon to inform the Hunts of a $135,000,000’ margin
call. Herbert responded with a stunner:
“We can’t make it.”
The Bache people could hardly believe it. Had their biggest client reached the end of the rope? Still reeling
from the thought of it, the Bache men told Herbert they would have to begin liquidating the Hunts’
contracts. Herbert indicated that they should go ahead if that was ‘what was required.
The’ next day, Bache sold off $100,000,000 of Hunt bullion. It also contacted the CFTC. Bache told the
commission that the Hunts’ account carried equity of only $90,000,000 and that the brothers would
probably lose another $86,000,000 in the next day’s trading. Combined with other recent losses of
$40,000,000, that left a deficit in the Hunts’ account of some $36,000,000. More important as far as the rest
of the world was concerned, it was the kind of news that raised the specter of a full-scale financial disaster.
Word that the Hunts’ losses had imperiled the stability of a major brokerage house could drive the market
into a panic.
CFTC chairman James Stone sounded the alarm to the Government’s financial heads of state. A short time
later, fearing the worst, Stone, Volcker, SEC chairman Harold Williams and Deputy Treasury Secretary
Robert Carswell began a round-the-clock silver market monitoring session.
That same day, Bunker suddenly turned up in Paris. At eight P.M. Paris time, which was two P.M. in New
York, he released a remarkable announcement to the press via a Paris agency. His statement said that he
and four Arab partners had acquired “more than 200,000,000 ounces of silver” and that the group was
putting up its hoard to back the sale of silver bonds. The statement went on to say that the bonds would be
distributed through “big European banks” (though it did not name any) and promised that the bonds would
be in denominations of varying size, so as to attract small investors as well as large ones. Bunker’s
statement disclosed that his partners in the silver bonds venture were Prince Faisal bin Abdallah, Sheik Al-
Amoudi, Mahmoud Fustok (a Saudi contractor and advisor to the prince) and Naji Nahas, the Brazilian
Lebanese who had purchased silver with the Conti group.
The announcement carried a host of intriguing ramifications. On one level, it appeared that he had achieved
his dream: the creation of his own separate economy. Just as the governments of the world had issued
currencies by virtue of the metal they owned, Bunker and his Arab partners were now planning to issue
their own “real” money, even as the governments of the world were now issuing paper with no metal
behind it.
In reality, Bunker’s announcement carried a far more desperate message. The silver bonds arrangements
were obviously incomplete, or he would have been able to name the banks involved. With silver prices
dropping and a personal financial debacle in the offing, Bunker was apparently making a last ditch
confirmation of the fact that he was still bullish on silver. Page 17 of 19
The next day, Thursday, March 27, the silver market collapsed. The price of silver opened that day at
$15.80 per ounce. Then rumors started circulating that the Hunts had a one billion dollar margin call and
they were not going to be able to meet it. Subsequent rumors said that Bache was on the verge of going
under. The price of silver plummeted to 10.80 an ounce. The debacle spilled over into the stock market on
the strength of an additional rumor that the Hunts were selling off huge stock shares in Louisiana Land.
Gulf Resources and Texaco. The Dow Jones average dropped a staggering 25.43 points, hitting its lowest
level in five years. It looked to many like the sky was falling.
About that time, a second wave of rumors hit the streets. The Hunts would be able to meet their margin
call, after all. The price of silver remained at its $10.80 level, but the stock market rallied incredibly.
Bargain hunters and other buyers brought the Dow-Jones back up to only 2.14 points below the level at
which it had begun the day.
Shock waves from the silver crash reverberated around the world. For the little guy, there was reason for
rejoicing:
The break in silver prices was one of the first big price downturns in a long time. For investors who had
gone short on silver, it was a time for raking in big profits. Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental
Petroleum, for one, reported a gain of $119,000,000 in silver’s slump. For investors who had followed the
Hunts, there was reason for jumping out of windows: They lost millions that they could afford to part with
far less easily than could Bunker and Herbert. But even for those who had remained on the sidelines, there
was reason for grave concern. There had not been a day like Black Thursday since the Great Depression.
As the world press tried frantically to reach him, Bunker made himself unavailable for comment. Shortly
after making his silver bonds announcement, he left Paris on a plane to Saudi Arabia to consult with his
Arab partners. Having been billions ahead, he was now staring at billions in losses. The only thing he said
before taking off was, “It’ll all come out in the wash.”
Bunker’s prediction turned out to be more accurate than he might have wished. Instead of repeating Black
Thursday’s debacle, silver prices rallied to $12 an ounce the next day. But Bunker and Herbert Hunt found
themselves with some of the biggest losses in U. S. financial history. Since January, the value of their silver
bullion had depreciated by nearly four billion dollars. Because most of that silver had been purchased at
under ten dollars an ounce, they were actually still a little bit ahead on their bullion purchases. But they had
taken a tremendous beating in the futures market and on silver contracts they had purchased when prices
were in the $35 an ounce range. The exact extent of the Hunts’ troubles was hard even for them to
determine, but it quickly became clear that their outstanding debts were in the one and a half billion dollar
range, including a $665,000,000 delivery contract with Englehard that they could not meet.
With much of their holdings pledged as collateral on loans that, in turn, had been used to buy silver, the
Hunts and their bankers were in a double bind. The more the price went down, the more they owed, and the
less their original collateral their silver was worth.
On the Sunday following Black Thursday, Bunker flew in from Saudi Arabia to meet with Herbert and the
Englehard people in Dallas. Since Bunker was fatigued, Herbert did most of the talking, and most of what
Herbert had to say sounded pretty grim. Among other things, he informed the Englehard men that the entire
Hunts’ silver was already pledged as collateral on loans, or, as he put it, was “all under water.” Such a
predicament might have seriously upset other mortals, but not Bunker Hunt. Confronted with his
multibillion-dollar troubles, he simply observed, “a billion dollars isn’t what it used to be.”
Despite their ability to remain calm, the Hunts did not succeed in working out a deal with Englehard in
Dallas. So that afternoon, they and the Englehard men flew to Boca Raton, Florida, where the heads of the
nation’s largest banks had gathered for a meeting of the Federal Reserve City Bankers Association. Volcker
happened to be in town to give a speech to the association, and upon hearing of the Hunt Englehard Page 18 of 19
problem, allowed that he had no objection to their trying to negotiate a loan, despite his earlier disapproval
of lending for commodity speculation purposes.
Through the night and into the wee hours of the morning, the Hunts and the Englehard men negotiated with
the bankers. Volcker sat in on some of the talks and, at one point, even appeared with a shirt over his
pajama top to check on the status of the negotiations. But even under the benign gaze of the Federal
Reserve Board chairman, the bankers could not come to terms with the Hunts. The brothers’ maze of debts,
commitments and interlocking collateral was just too complicated. As one participant put it, “There were
just too many loose ends.”
Nevertheless, by the time the sun rose, the Hunts and Englehard had managed to reach an accommodation.
Under the terms of the deal, the Hunts agreed to give Englehard 8,500,000 ounces of silver and a 20
percent interest in their Canadian oil properties in the Beaufort Sea. Although carried on the books as worth
about $275,000,000, the Beaufort Sea properties have a potential worth estimated at $600,000,000 to
$750,000,000. But the wells there have yet to come on production and it may be years before they do. At
this point, the Hunts just don’t know how much their deal with Englehard will cost them.
With the completion of the Englehard agreement, negotiations for a loan to the Hunts picked up again.
Fearing that the Hunts’ inability to pay their silver debts might cause more major tremors in the nation’s
financial system, Fed chairman Volcker gave his tacit approval to a plan to bail the brothers out. Under the
terms of the deal, a consortium of banks, including First National Bank of Dallas and Morgan Guaranty of
New York, has agreed to lend 1.1 billion dollars to a partnership composed of the Hunt brothers and Placid
Oil, the most viable entity under the Hunt family corporate umbrella. The partnership, in turn, will use the
money to pay off the Hunt brothers silver debts.
The Hunts’ loan does not come cheap. As collateral, Placid has mortgaged substantially all of its oil and
gas properties in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico; those properties make up roughly one half of the
company’s six billion dollars in assets. In addition, Bunker and Herbert have contributed collateral in the
form of 63,000,000 ounces of silver bullion and coal properties worth an estimated $480,000,000. They
have also agreed not to speculate in the silver market until the 63,000,000 ounces of silver they have
contributed to the partnership have been sold off.
On top of all that, Bunker and Herbert have also had to make some costly internal family financing
arrangements. Fearing that Placid, the family jewel, might be left holding the bag if silver prices declined
further, the Hunt sisters insisted that the boys put up even more of their own property to secure Plaid’s
interest in the silver partnership. Along with their brother Lamar (who participated in the silver deal to a
much lesser extent than his brothers), Bunker and Herbert have mortgaged their racehorses. furs, fine
paintings, coin collections, jewelry and cars, as well as more oil and real estate properties. The bottorn line
is that in trying to prove themselves even greater moneymakers than their late father, the Hunt brothers
have ended up putting the better part of the family empire in hock.
At this writing, the future of both Nelson Bunker Hunt and the silver market remains very much lip in the
air. Many analysts believe that at $12 - $14 an ounce, silver is now drastically under priced. While prices
may not shoot through the $50 an ounce mark again any time soon, there is a good possibility they could
climb hack up to the $20 - $25 range. If that happens, the Hunts could easily pay off their silver debts and
even wind up with some tidy profits.
On the other hand, if silver languishes or drops even lower, the Hunts could lose hundreds of millions
more. In addition to worrying about the price, they have to pay interest on their 1.1 billion dollar loan at the
rate of $500,000 per day, which works out to more than $180,000,000 per year. The Hunts also have to deal
with a market that knows they must sell. Even if silver is going up in the long run, that selling will
inevitably drive the price downward in the short term, and the market appears to he waiting for that to
happen. Finally, the Hunts may well have to cope with even more silver than what they have put into the
partnership with Placid. They claim that they have only 63,000,000 ounces left. But their huge purchases in 1973 and 1974 seem to have been lost in the calculations. The brothers may actually hold another
40,000,000 ounces of silver in their European stash. But as long as prices remain depressed, that extra sort
does them little good.
Whether or not these dark clouds turn out to have a silver lining, it is more than likely that the brothers will
be able to pay off their debts one way or another. The sheer size of their non silver holdings makes
bankruptcy a most remote possibility. For Bunker, the worst part of all this is not his losses but the
increasing amount of public disclosure and Government inquiry the Hunts have been subjected to in order
to pay off their debts. According to his friends, the stress of these developments has caused Bunker’s legs
to sweat and even made him lose a little weight.
Yet, as one associate says, “For a man who has just lost billions, he looks remarkably calm but then, he’s
like that.” Down but far from out, Bunker remains bullish on silver. He fully expects that prices will rise
and that his financial situation will take care of itself. He also believes he may have grounds for a lawsuit
against the commodities exchanges for changing the silver buying rules. As he put it in a recent appearance
before a Congressional investigating committee, “The game is not over.”
The people who know Bunker Hunt best don’t doubt that for a minute.
