Silver Lessons From Benjamin Roth's Great Depression Diary

Fun fact from the diary: The Rabbi of Roth's synagogue, Rabbi Isadore Edmund Philo, took a pay cut in 1931 from $1.16M a year to $1M a year, in today's gold prices. What a drag.

• Chinese silver premiums fluctuate and do not follow a specific pattern. I don't know why people are talking about it so much.

• Japanese 10-year bond yields break 1% and the yen weakens. All JGB yields are now nominally positive...!

• Excerpts from Benjamin Roth's diary during the Great Depression highlight economic struggles and theories surrounding silver and bimetallism.

China Silver Premium Talk

I've heard people murmuring about Chinese premiums for silver and citing it as the reason that silver is heading higher, or something more esoteric that sounds more impressive and cosmopolitan. I checked the graph and put in some of my signature rectangles.

Premiums are high but not like this hasn't happened before. I can't see any pattern that correlates to high silver premiums in China. Sometimes silver is high on a Chinese discount, sometimes low on a premium, sometimes high on a premium, sometimes low on a discount. That's all the possible combinations. Luckily I learned a Mishna (Shabbath 1:1) on combinations of 4 with my son last night so my head is still stuck in these patterns. I don't know what everyone is yammering about. There isn't much going on here, at least not yet.

Japan 10Y Bond Breaks…1%

The 10Y JGB breaks 1% and the yen drops to 156.6. The higher yields go, the lower the yen will go. The 40Y JGB yield (yes they have one of those) is near record highs.

All Japanese yields at all maturities are actually nominally positive. What insane world we live in when this has to be pointed out as an oddity.

I'm going to switch track now and share select paragraphs from the Diary of Benjamin Roth, a lawyer from Youngstown, Ohio who lived through the Great Depression. Someone recommended I read this book so I bought it and I'm going through it on my walks to and from the gym. My bold, and my comments in italics.

Roth was a Jew, which I suspected (how he writes and thinks) but couldn't confirm until he mentioned praying at Rodef Sholom Temple in Youngstown and mentioning a Rabbi Philo (I looked him up), who had his salary cut from $10,000 to $8,500 in 1931. At $21 an ounce (gold was only moved to $35 in 1934), $8,500 is the equivalent of nearly $1,000,000 a year at today's gold prices. Sounds like he could have taken a BIT MORE OF A PAY CUT. Talk amongst yourselves. (Sorry. Don't blame me. I didn't do it.)

I looked the place up (and Rabbi Philo), and it still exists, founded in 1867, and it's now Reform (housebroken) and won't be around much longer is my guess, an early casualty to the precursor to LGBTQ++!!. (I'm just rolling my eyes and venting for my own amusement here.)

Anyway, here's Roth:

September 9, 1931