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Is Silver Money? (Revisited)
Many mainline speakers and workshops were made available and it did not take very long for me to "hear through the grapevine" that a well-known personality in the precious metals space had deemed that "silver is NOT money, it is an industrial metal." Since this is hearsay to me, I want to be careful in that perhaps I don't have the exact statement, but I did get a barrage of people coming to me and reporting essentially the same information. First, let us be clear: silver is an industrial metal and used in industry it most certainly is. However, a better label might be high technology metal, because silver conducts electricity better than any element; it is crucial to so many applications, our way of life would cease without silver. The industrial use of silver continues to grow, although admittedly it might slow down during this year due to recessionary pressures, but we cannot be sure of that yet. In any event, silver used to comprise about 35% of the total demand a decade ago, and now, according to the Silver Institute, industrial use is 54%. Clearly, silver is an industrial metal and makes up over half of the total demand. No argument from this writer, but what about silver's role as money?
The three above quotes might help put the silver-as-money debate into perspective, yet they do not really prove that silver is money. For absolute proof we need to know how the law defines money. As I was doing research for this missive, I asked Google if "Silver is Money" and the first article to pop up was one written by me in 2001. From that article...
Reading further we find:
In my view we are all entitled to our opinions, and, to my thinking, the Free Market of Ideas is most valuable to a free society. However, none of us is entitled to make up our own facts, and saying that black is white, under the current Orwellian conditions, does not change reality although a great number of debt burdened can see it that way. According to the Law of the Land (United States)
We again see silver clearly defined. In fact let me digress slightly and ask, Have any citizens committed fraud by paying a debt with a debt? In other words, all the circulating currency is loaned into existence . . . are you breaking the law by passing this on as money? Alas, I'm being facetious but could not resist. Okay, so almost everyone knows about the Constitution and how little respect it receives by all those representatives of the people (debt slaves?), from the President on down, who take an oath to uphold it against all enemies foreign and domestic. Yet, we live in a world that is currently making up the rules as we go along. And what is the current rule (law) about silver as money? I think the U.S. Mint might make a case that we can establish as to the current status, and this is what is clearly stated on their Web site.
So you can pay your heating bill, water, trash, rent, etc., with silver; by law, it is still money. Regardless of what anyone states, like it or not, the law is clear - you can use Silver Eagles to pay for goods and services within the U.S., and therefore silver is indeed money. I do not, however, advise this at all, because you would need to pay in "legal" terms, meaning "One Dollar" per one-ounce silver coin. As we all know (most of us anyway), the face value is far different from the market price. As this is written, it takes about 15 pieces of paper labeled ONE DOLLAR to buy a coin that says ONE DOLLAR. Interesting? It is an honor to be. Sincerely,
Mr. Morgan has been published in The Herald Tribune, Futures magazine, The Gold Newsletter, Resource Consultants, Resource World, Investment Rarities, The Idaho Observer, Barron's, and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Morgan does weekly Money, Metals and Mining Review for Kitco. He is hosted monthly on Financial Sense with Jim Puplava. Mr. Morgan was published in the Global Investor regarding Ten Rules of Silver Investing, which you can receive for free. His book Get the Skinny on Silver Investing is available on Amazon or the link provided. His private Internet-only newsletter, The Morgan Report, is $129.99 annually. To suscribe to the Morgan Report click here.
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I just returned from the Cambridge House Investment Conference in Vancouver,
BC, and found this to be one of the best precious metals gatherings ever, not
so much from the perspective of a number of attendees, but from the quality
of the people who did attend.
Mr.
Morgan has followed the silver market daily for over thirty years. Much of
this Web site, 
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