But Bunker was in the oil business, and the Middle East oil producers he talked to were still worried about the depreciation of the dollar. Every time that happened, inflation-hedged assets and the economy went down. I told him I thought it might be a good time to get out because the Fed was becoming tight enough to raise short-term interest rates above long-term rates (which was called “inverting the yield curve”). At that point, silver was trading at around $ 10. He kept buying and buying as inflation and the price of silver went up, until he had essentially cornered the silver market.

He’d been wanting to get his wealth out of paper money for the past few years, so he’d been buying commodities, especially silver, which he had started purchasing for about $ 1.29 per ounce, as a hedge against inflation. Bunker saw the debt crisis and inflation risks pretty much as I saw them. There was clearly a sense of crisis: The nation was confused, frustrated, and angry. There were long lines to buy gas and extreme market volatility. embassy in Tehran, taking fifty-two Americans hostage.

Just a few weeks before our meeting, Iranian militants had stormed the U.S. Bud Dillard, a Texan friend and client of mine who was big in the oil and cattle businesses, had introduced us a couple of years before, and we regularly talked about the economy and markets, especially inflation. “Just before Thanksgiving, I met with Bunker Hunt, then the richest man in the world, at the Petroleum Club in Dallas.

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