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Brothers William Herbert Hunt and Nelson Bunker in front of the Congress Committee: "A billion dollars is no longer what it used to be"
Photo: Bettmann Archive / Getty Images
It had to be a Texan, who else?
Only someone like Bunker Hunt can lose a billion dollars in a single day "and still have two billion dollars left afterwards," enthused Time magazine in 1980 about the man who dominated the silver market like no one before: Nelson Bunker Hunt .
At the time, Bunker Hunt and his brother William Herbert were the horrors of Wall Street: The Texans wanted to rule the silver market - and to do so, they accumulated huge amounts of silver and silver contracts.
The price of the precious metal rose from 6 to more than 50 dollars an ounce.
Many Americans carried their silver cutlery to the pawnbroker to turn it into cash.
But then the financial establishment put an end to the hustle and bustle: On "Silver Thursday", March 27, 1980, the silver price plummeted - and took the Hunt brothers with them.
In the end, Bunker Hunt had no choice but to file for bankruptcy.
Now followers of the WallStreetBets movement are following in the footsteps of the Texan siblings: Hobby speculators want to push the silver price up from 25 to 1000 dollars with targeted purchases.
The project is controversial in the community, but on Monday the silver price reached $ 30.10, its highest level since the beginning of 2013.
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