Hunt has 'no regrets' 29 years after 'Silver Thursday’

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Hunt has 'no regrets' 29 years after 'Silver Thursday’

Associated Press

March 22, 2009, 3:23PM

DALLAS — Twenty-nine years ago this week, an attempt by Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brothers to buy up the silver market collapsed and took with it a large part of Hunt’s estate.

Hunt, who was once considered the world’s richest private individual, was left with lawsuits, bankruptcy and tax problems in the aftermath of what has become known as "Silver Thursday."

Now 83, with the lawsuits behind him and the taxes paid, the son of legendary oilman H.L. Hunt lives in relative modesty in a North Dallas house with his wife of 57 years, The Dallas Morning News reported in its Sunday editions.

“It was unfortunate, let’s put it that way,” he said. “They were gunning for us pretty hard.”

Hunt struck oil big in Libya. By the late 1960s, Hunt, with a fortune variously estimated at $8 billion to $16 billion, was christened, in newspapers and magazines, as the world’s richest man.

Hunt and two brothers, Herbert and Lamar, began buying silver as early as 1970, when the price was around $1.50 an ounce.

“Bunker and Herbert really did think we were going to have an inflationary depression,” said Hunt’s wife, Caroline, “and that silver was a reasonable thing to buy.”

By January 1980, the price hit a record high of $50 an ounce, and the brothers held nearly $4.5 billion in silver, much of it stored in Swiss bank vaults.

Federal commodities regulators set trading limits after becoming alarmed about the Hunts’ holdings, then prices fell. The Hunts were unable to meet the margin calls on their futures contracts. Then, a sell-off followed and silver nose-dived to less than $11 an ounce on Thursday, March 27, 1980.

They lost more than $2 billion after being forced to sell, but Hunt maintains that he did nothing wrong.

“I don’t think anybody can corner the market,” he said. “But I guess if you buy up a lot of items ... the price can go up.”

Harry Hurt III, who wrote a biography of the Hunt family dynasty, Texas Rich, said the Hunts were not trying to corner the market.

Bunker Hunt believed, Hurt said, that apocalyptic days were approaching, and they would render paper money worthless.

“They (critics) misunderstood him,” Hurt said. “The guy was a fanatic. He really believed that stuff.”

A New York civil jury found in 1988 that the brothers used fraud and conspiracy to monopolize the world silver market, prompting Bunker Hunt to file for bankruptcy. He was forever banned from American commodity trading.

He said he has “no regrets. I guess if I thought about it hard enough, I’d probably come up with some.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6330933.html

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Have no fear. Obama will render the US Dollar worthless.