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Message:: [QUOTE="Cloudsweeper99, post: 163901, member: 3011"]It's a little simplistic to say that they stopped using silver in the coins because the price went up.  What really happened is that the federal government desired to spend much more money on the Great Society programs and Viet Nam war, and there was no way to do this by taxing the amounts required from the public because nobody would stand for it.  So they choose the alternative and simply created the money they needed out of nothing through the combination of Treasury borrowing and Federal Reserve monitization of the debt.  In this sort of situation, the currency is debased and loses its value because it is unbacked by anything tangible.  So what we really experienced was not a rise in silver prices, but the slow motion collapse of the dollar which continues to this day.  Another way to prove this point is to consider the fact that the dollar was originally defined as a specific weight in silver, 371.25 grains.  By this definition, the dollar price of silver can't increase because the dollar isn't a price, it is a weight.  But this restriction prevented the government from pursuing the spending growth they desired, so they convinced people that currency didn't have to be an asset, and that it is merely a unit of information.  That is about as concisely as I can explain it.[/QUOTE]