Dallas
Richard West Afew years ago, Margaret Thatcher went to visit a school in the East End of London where she was asked, as a scien- tist, to give the children a lesson in chemistry. She chose to tell them why silver spoons suffer corrosion. The New Statesman published an article on this inci- dent, saying it showed Mrs Thatcher's in- sensitivity to the 'underprivileged' people `below the poverty line' who would not even have heard of silver spoons. The story of the spoons has now become part of anti- Thatcher mythology; it even cropped up recently in one of the New York papers. In fact it shows that Mrs Thatcher under- stands the poorer people of England who, for centuries have regarded silver, in spoon or even tea-pot form, as a basic asset, to be preserved, pawned, or at worst sold in time of hardship. Now, of course, almost everyone has a bank account; and even the silver is lodged at the bank.
The demise of household silver came about in the winter of 1979-80 when two groups of people in Texas and Saudi Arabia almost managed to corner the market in this metal and sent up the price to well over $50 an ounce. The film manufacturers, Il- ford's, were almost ruined, Stephen Fay ex- plains in this excellent book: 'The price of Kodak's medical X-ray film rose by 93 per
cent, and some colour-printing paper went up almost as much. In Hollywood, film directors who were accustomed to shoot 12 feet for every foot that finally appeared on the screen (the silver screen, of course) were being told by producers to cut the ratio to six to one. In London, the three Express newspapers, which normally spend £150,000 a year on film and printing, found that costs had risen to £350,000. Dentists, who use silver as part of the compound for filling teeth, were forced to charge even more ...'
The silver bubble brought quite unex- pected bonuses to those people, millions of people, with silver stored away in a cup- board. In the side streets between Fifth and Sixth avenues on 46th Street in New York City, and Hatton Garden in London, thousands of people queued to sell silver or- naments. As Mr Fay says: 'Now they could sell silver for much more than they had originally paid for it — if, indeed, they had paid for the objects at all, because many of them were inherited — and could use the money for something they valued more highly: for a mortgage payment on the house, for anything useful that would cer- tainly cost more next year'. Lovers of fine silver were appalled. Objects of art were sold just for the price of the metal. Such is the panic bred by inflation. Police began to notice that burglars now took only silver, leaving everything else. Gangs were said to have trucks equipped with miniature smelters to process the silver objects at once. A gang in London who hijacked a truckload of silver found that the price was so high they could not sell the stuff. By the time it had been recovered the price had fallen again but Lloyds, the insurers, had had to pay for the theft at the top of the market.
This book will interest most the kind of people who read the city pages but Stephen Fay has managed to make the silver market comprehensible even to those of us who have little skill at making money. Silver is only one of several commodities where there is gambling on futures: tin, rubber, coffee, soya beans, even pork bellies are others. The commodities world appears to be peopled with weird eccentrics such as Andrew Racz (pronounced Rats) who thought the assault on silver was part of a great conspiracy on the part of Texas and Saudi Arabia. To judge from this book, `Rats' was more or less right. Gambling with silver is one of the things that people do with the money they make from oil.
The family who attempted to corner silver, the Hunts of Texas, are better known to the world in their television caricature as
the 'Ewings' of Dallas. The patriarch of the family was Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, or `H.L' who claims to have been an infant prodigy in the world of commerce: 'MY father and elder brothers often traded in the futures commodity and provision market. When a little kid, I told them that trading futures, for farmers and cattle raisers, was a gamble with people who shuffled out, and dealt and telegraphed them what their hand was. Nevertheless, I have made a few stock market ventures, which, without exception, bore out the childish warning I gave My elders'. He made his first fortune at cards: `I never came up against a better poker player than myself. I don't believe there ever was one anywhere in the world'. He made a second fortune from oil. He, thought he had a `genius gene' and believed it was right to pass it on to the 14 children of his wife and two permanent mistresses' According to Mr Fay, it used to be said of `H.L' that 'he could not keep his prick In his pants'. Among H.L's progeny were the two brothers Bunker and Herbert Hunt who almost managed to corner silver. The donn- nant and more aggressive brother, Bunker: inherited H.L's skill at poker, a nose for on and violently right-wing views. One of his magazines called John F. Kennedy a, dangerous red on the day he was murdered at Dallas. He rightly denies any respon- sibility for the murder; also being a *al.,- monger. War with Russia, he once opine' would be 'a little too fatal'. Fat, slit-eyed, a guzzler of hamburgers and spare-rths,' washed down with Coke or Dr Pepper anu followed by ice cream, Bunker is also mean' ,; He travels economy class on planes and 0" not pay for the ear-phones for M-fitgli,; movies: 'I never buy those things. I can to' what's happening just by looking'• his seldom changes his underclothes; recreation is throwing stones. When Stephen Fay met him in Paris, Bunker.aP; peared to be interested only in gambling. `There is a card game called black-jack, cif you play it over here?' It's called vingt-e,' un'. 'Well, I'm told there are some peoPt,et who can play so they always win. I dan know how they do it, but when the casino operators find out they're there, they won t, let them play any more. They get thrown out'. Bunker shrugged his shoulders, !n,• dicating that he was also a victim of such in, justice at the hands of Comex, the Nev' York Commodity Exchange that tried r° stop him cornering silver. less Herbert Hunt is slightly thinner, . unscrupulous and less greedy. Against . which it has to be said that he, almost single-handedly, did for tennis what Kerry Packer did for cricket, turning it from an amateur sport into big business. He is to blame for such odious yobs as McEnroe. The Hunt family lawyer and trouble shooter Ed Guinn also deserves a mention: `He would arrive at a meeting with 021e ministers wearing a replica of tn„ Manneken-Pis as a tie-pin, with a tube tri.`: bulb of water in his pocket, which he would squeeze at an inappropriate moment'.
Previous page
