Jonesy said:
There is nearly always a substitute for everything in industry...
Agreed. However, its quite a leap of faith to say that element "A" will not go up in price too much from today's price, because technology "will just come up with a substitute".
In the July 2010 European Commission document called, "Report of the Ad-hoc Working Group on defining critical raw materials", it says (p.5, Executive Summary), [this report] "... it takes into account the substitutability between materials, ie. the potential for substitution of a restricted raw material by another that does not face similar restrictions." It continues (p.7), "One of the most powerful forces influencing the economic importance of raw materials in the future is technological change. In many cases, their rapid diffusion can drastically increase the demand for certain raw materials..."
Think-tanks sub-divide the periodic table of the elements into 3 categories, (1) critical elements (over 30 elements including Ag & Pt), (2) frugal elements, and (3) the "elements of hope", which are the most abundant elements available to mankind and can be extracted from the earth's crust, from the oceans and from the atmosphere. They are called the "elements of HOPE" because they are praying that *somehow* we can figure out a way to use these elements for almost everything.
Antimony is one of the critical elements, so it was no surprise to many, that earlier this year, the chinese were involved in a protracted process to completely buy out the only Antimony company in Australia, Anchor Mining. If you look at the history here, the chinese were desperate, as they kept coming back to the bargaining table time & time again, with a new offer. A couple of months ago, James Dines told the Melbourne Resources Round-up conference that Australia is in danger of squandering its "irreplaceable inheritance ... traded for easily printed paper". Yeah sure China, take our antimony, we don't want it...
James Dines & Stephen Leeb both make the point that China is building huge stock-piles of these elements for China's use in the centuries ahead; they're not only accumulating in order to re-sell to the west at a higher price in some finished product. Thankfully for China, most western politicians are asleep at the wheel, although america's now getting worried at China's huge raw materials buying spree in Africa. When they told everyone a couple of months ago how much copper they had stock-piled, people were shocked, because it was a lot more than anyone had suspected. What was a big laugh was when american "military intelligence" woke from their slumber and realized that their missiles needed REE, which the chinese completely dominate; talk about panicking. Ha ha ha... that's US intelligence for you.
I don't believe that the answer to what is going on now, is to say, "Its not really that big a deal, because we'll just come up with substitutes."
Silver is only a small part of a much bigger story, that of materials scarcity.