Silver Shenanigans (1980) w/ Bijan Stephen
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2022
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s January 18th. This day in 1980, a group of Texas oil billionaires were in the middle of a scheme to drive up the worldwide price of silver. This would culminate in a few months later on what came to be known as “Silver Thursday,” when their speculation collapsed and sent worldwide markets into chaos.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Bijan Stephen, host of the podcast “Eclipsed,” which is currently running a four-part series on the Hunt brothers and Silver Thursday.
Listen to Eclipsed wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:10.0 | This day January 18th, 1980, the price of silver hit a record high on the world market, $49.45. |
| 0:18.9 | This was an increase of over 713% from the price just a year or so earlier. |
| 0:25.0 | Incredible rise in the price of silver and an intentional one because this peak in the |
| 0:30.1 | price of silver was part of a concerted campaign over a couple years by a group of Texas |
| 0:34.8 | billionaires to essentially corner the world's silver market. We'll get into this group, this |
| 0:40.4 | family really at the heart of all of this, but this was a scheme by a set of brothers. |
| 0:44.8 | Nelson, Bunker, Hunt, William Herbert, Hunt, and Lamar Hunt. |
| 0:48.8 | They were the sons of H.L Hunt, oil tycoon, conservative thinker, very paranoid thinker. |
| 0:54.5 | The Hunt Clan keeps popping up over and over as you tell the story of business and conservative |
| 0:59.0 | politics throughout the 20th century. |
| 1:01.5 | Anyway, this attempt to corner the silver market would |
| 1:04.1 | culminate a couple months later in what is known as Silver Thursday when shocker |
| 1:08.6 | things started to crash the group's complicated financial scheme did not work out. |
| 1:13.6 | They were on the brink of losing billions. |
| 1:15.4 | Others had to step in and bail them out. |
| 1:16.9 | The world markets freaked out, one of the worst financial panics in years. |
| 1:20.2 | A lot of this sounds pretty familiar folks who lived through maybe 2008 and other panics and crashes and so forth and complicated financial schemes. |
| 1:28.0 | Anyway, this whole Silver Thursday Saga is the subject of a new four-part series from the excellent |
| 1:34.9 | history podcast Eclipse. It is hosted by Bijon Stephen who is here to discuss the |
| 1:39.7 | silver scheme of 1980 and the very powerful and shady characters involved. |
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