That figure for silver and platinum can’t possibly be right. At the current market price, that would represent less than 500 million ounces of silver, even if we completely exclude the 90x more expensive platinum from the picture. Put in other terms, slightly less than 500 million ounces of silver represents approximately $600 million face value in pre-1965 US dimes, quarters and halves. In other words, that is approximately the same amount of silver dimes, quarters and halves that were produced in the 1964 coinage year alone, in just the United States.

There is a lot more silver bullion floating around than that.

All this was done under the Emergency Banking Relief Act which amended the Trading With The Enemy Act, empowering the President to prohibit “hoarding” of gold even in peacetime. As far as I know both Acts are still in force; if not, the Patriot Act appears flexible enough to cover almost any situation.

Current trends are unlikely to trigger any such drastic measures, but I get a little nervouse when the serious gold bugs predict gold prices in the multi-thousands per ounce range. If things go that far it wouldn’t be hard to demonize gold bullion owners as a threat to the economy and therefore to national security. Since very few citizens own bullion, or know anyone who does, I wouldn’t expect much public support for the rights of these “hoarders.”