Something Else About the Economy No-one's Told You

As to the spinning vortex which is this current economy -- I think we're all trying to work out whether we're being slowly pulled into the abyss at the center (as my coworker put it) or just riding in a storm cell as per usual. I'll give you something new to think about. A singular event that happened yesterday which I haven't heard about from the major news sources.

I wanted to buy some silver coins. I started out at Kitco.com, an excellent source. Here's what they had on their website:

The following products have been temporarily removed from our Precious Metal Store until further notice due to production and delivery delays that retailers are currently facing; 1 oz Gold bars, 1 oz Kitco Gold bars, 10 oz Gold bars, 1 oz Silver Eagles, 1 oz Silver Maples, 1 oz Silver Philharmonic coins, 1 oz Olympic Silver Maples, 100 oz Silver bars and 1 oz Palladium Maples.

The only silver left were 1000 ounce bars. (That's more than 60 pounds.) I went over to Tulving.com and looked at their inventory. They were sold out of all silver (coins, bars and rounds of various sizes) except for 500 coin boxes, $1000-less-than-pure bags of coins, and, yes, 1000 ounce bars.

Bullion Direct? A pittance on inventory; a flea market would have more.

A-Mark? Some stock, but a high markup.

All sites warned of shipping delays.

I called one of the dealers who'd been in business for 30 years. "This is a dumb question," I said, "but how often does the supply of silver get this low? Is it unusual?"

"It's unprecedented." He answered.

My husband asked if this was because people were hoarding silver, but the broker declined to give an opinion.

So should you buy precious metals? Well, if you believe the economy will go back to normal, then probably not. Everyone who wants precious metal will have their supply, eventually things will get better, they'll sell and the price will have nowhere to go but down.

What if you believe the sky is falling? Then I guess you might want to have some, but 1000 ounce bars are really hard to carry to the Quick-E Mart. The clerk may not be able to make change either.

Before you panic in this economic crisis, remember this: if the economy does collapse and the US goes into depression, all those tech and manufacturing jobs that went overseas will come back.