Silver vs Gold

Statement:
In short:  Silver is a better investment than gold for a number of reasons that end up being unimportant because of the nature of the inflation we face.  Silver and gold are both great investments presently, as well as being excellent stores of value.  Gold is going to cost more U.S. dollars to purchase in the future.  If you want to have more USD in the coming weeks, months, and years, then buy silver now and sell it later.  If you want to avoid the value loss associated with holding USD then buy silver and gold.  Additionally, if you would like to preserve value in the face of a discredited (no pun intended) collapsing world reserve fiat currency which is causing havoc everywhere silver will do that too!


Silver is as good as or better than gold, a
mostly meaningless argument from the wider view of things:
-Incremental - Almost everyone can afford to go buy a silver ring today, not everyone can go buy a gold ring today.  With monetary changes pushing "all investors" (read "everyone and their fucking grandma") into PM, silver may get a boost relative to gold just because it takes less to buy it when the purchasers are poor, it may also take a boost over gold because you have a much easier time buying bread and milk with silver than you do with gold.  These, however, are just minor concerns, especially when faced with the evolution of the monetary system.
-Shiny, like gold...as a matter of fact, except for the color, this stuff is a lot like gold.  Monetary history, practical value store, industrial uses, limited supply increases possible, credibility (literally - I'd take silver/gold as collateral, so would most all entities) in our current economic situation with little chance of changing any time soon, and it conducts electricity too.
-Silver is extreme!!!  It is the metal with the mostest mosts. From Wikipedia:  Silver is a very ductile, malleable (slightly harder than gold), monovalent coinage metal, with a brilliant white metallic luster that can take a high degree of polish. It has the highest electrical conductivity of all metals.  Among metals, pure silver has the highest thermal conductivity (the nonmetal diamond and superfluid helium II are higher) and one of the highest optical reflectivities. Silver also has the lowest contact resistance of any metal.
-When gold moves for monetary reasons silver follows.
-The debate between the two is mostly meaningless because with the USD loosing value for a number of reasons, physical gold and silver are the only guaranteed store of value available to the common person.
-Silver being better boils down to my personal view on a supply and demand situation which is difficult to summarize and compare.  There's a lot going on under a relatively calm surface.  I say silver looks better than gold, your mileage may vary, mine has been good so far, buy both.

Gold is going to cost more U.S. dollars to purchase in the future:
...if there are still dollars around to buy it with...the gold will still be around

-And on with the presentation -> INFLATION (I disagree with their conclusion, see next link)
 -Monetary uncertainty at the highest levels will cause inflation in and of itself and may cause hyper-inflation.
-Inflation, Stagflation, Deflection...I mean Keynesian Deflation, Hyper-Inflation? Like the old Kinks song goes "Have a Cup of Tea!," wait, wrong commodity, don't forget to run off with all the silver in the tea set when those British bastards turn their backs!  Tea doesn't store as well anyhow.  What I mean by all this craziness is that you will be able to wait for opportunity when holding physical silver, and that opportunity seems likely for a number of reasons which I'm reviewing here because many of the inflation that is dooming the USDs quality.
-"Flight to quality"
-Gold fights the -flations.  Got you through the deflation in USD relative to TVs well enough did it not?!  Seriously though, deflation?!  I believe we would have to be seriously contracting the money supply (%20-30 or so like in the Great Panic, 1830's) or maybe a magic fucking elf could shit out an export based economy for us.  Short of US buying back USD, magic fucking elves, or a gold standard (Great sag 1870-1896) it's going to be certain inflation, maybe hyper-inflation, stagflation is just right out.  Stagflation may exist in non-essentials, but that is because they are non-essential and are not being purchased during the depression.  Even the fanciful hypotheticals I pose would not hurt the value of gold (except for the elf maybe), in fact some would send it through the roof.  Prices decrease, ha!  Decrease in fiat money supply, ha!  Gold standard, HA HA!  A gold standard will not work practically as a means for international trade, but the attempt, or a perceived attempt at one, at one would drive the perceived values of PMs through the roof and into orbit.
-Amounts getting smaller amounts to inflation, shame on you corporations, just cause we're bad at math you thought that might hide inflation?
-The USD index is pushing to go bellow 74 to try to find a new low.  Currency weakness means gold is worth more currency if that is any comfort?

Gold-Oil Ratio:
The Gold Oil Ratio is at a low, signaling a possible buying opportunity for gold from oil, and thus silver too.  However, this is not completely reliable as oil may outperform gold under the current supply/demand complications and push the ratio even lower.  Both will follow similar paths relative to the USD, alleviating some concern, and since you likely do not own a crude oil storage facility I'm going to keep recommending silver and gold.  Example Charts and Analysis.

Monetary Clusterfuck (Abridged and in no certain order):
-Monetary Clusterfuck: With China making vocal its plans to change the abundant use of the USD as world reserve currency to the measured use of the USD by way of good business practices, we should also consider getting the fuck our of our dominated currency.
-Monetary Clusterfuck II: Without China's help, the United States has run up a huge amount of social spending that results in little in the way of efficient productivity.  We spend more on ourselves than we make, we run up credit on the rest.
-Monetary Clusterfuck III: U.S. politics are fueled by corporate interests to the extreme of the exclusion of populist interests.  The status quo has corporate/governmental backing, and is unlikely to paradigm shift under institutional guidance.  This preserves the certainty of inflation as the status quo through money supply growth.  A forced shift by the populist elements would also be inflationary via alternate uncertainties.
-Monetary Clusterfuck IV: We are in massive debt.  It continues to grow.  We can only print our way out at the moment.  This causes inflation.
-Monetary Clusterfuck V: Japan* may need to spend our debt to recover (never mind buying more of it).  This would spit more USD into an already flooded system.  This causes inflation, says Goldman.

Gold:Silver:  One ratio to rule them all:
-This one causes me some consternation, but not much more than a good bit of thinking can put down.  The Gold-Silver ratio is at a low compared to the recent past and longer term past (10 years).  10 Years ago we reached the low we just reached again recently, ~1:40.  The historic all time low is 1:16.  I believe we go to ~1:20, like we did in 1980, based on supply and demand.
-This belief is vague and uncertain however.  We may see a massive demand spike for gold because of monetary developments that leave silver behind and spike the ration higher.  Such a demand spike for gold would certainly pull silver higher.  However, silver may be more practical and a collapse in paper PM may favor physical silver over gold.   I am certain that physical silver and gold will both be more valuable in a year's time.  Because of the volatile nature of modern money making and the history of the Gold-Silver ratio I am not 100% certain silver will out preform gold, I'd say I'm about 95% it's silver does best, 5% gold does best.  Buy both, your personal ratio will most certainly vary from your neighbor's, but "buy half and half" just rolls of the tongue so nicely.
-Then again it could just go to single digits and fuck up my nice well rounded advice like this guy says (Eric Sprott).
-In the end gold and silver rule, do not get stuck worrying about the ratio, just buy some of both one way or another.  The ratio rules you in that it requires you to buy some of both silver and gold, no matter what you think, because nobody knows what to think for sure on this one.

China: 
-Pink elephant?  I saw one just the other day that glows neon purple, eats treasury secretaries, and shits out all sorts of useful crap.  You'd think someone else would have noticed, especially that last secretary...I guess he did seem kind of clueless.
-China: Me want reasonable means of value exchange!!! ***stomp***stomp*** US: Try these tasty green backs!  Come on and shit me out an XBOX!!!  China:  Me tired of this, all empty calories, not filling...got any black gold or just some regular gold?  US:  Hold on, we are almost done invading some.  China:  I bought that already, it's mine.  US:  Not Libya!  China: Yes, Libya too.  US: NO! China: Yes!  And if not, then we just bought it from you.  US: Buy it from the French then asshole! China: I did. (2nd article)  Tasty! Got any more?  US (aside to audience): I do have this big stick, I wonder if I beat this elephant with it, will it then shit out an XBOX?  Only one way to find out...
-And so we find ourselves sitting atop a collapsing pile of empire and fiat currency and about to put a stick to a sleeping giant neon purple elephant that shits our goodies, wait, I mean China.  (This is inflationary)


Petro-Dollar Developments:
-Disruption to the petro-dollar system is inflationary.
-See earlier discussion of how China (elephant) was in Libya taking oil from the madman with the hot nurse, then revolution, then we invade.  Or read this.  This complicates matters with China, this is inflationary.
-Oil is energy, debt is energy to be expended, our debt is oil.  We need more oil, there is no more oil supply to easily implement.  This is inflationary.
-Our current oil supply just had a revolution against it's various governments.  Governments which were our puppets.  This is inflationary.

Conclusion:
-Money BAD!  Wait money good!?  Awh, this is fucked!  Give me as much gold and silver as this shit will get me, I'll be back in ten years...

Professional version:  With weakness in the USD a near certainty over the short term and on out, and with silver/gold an established and certain store of value with great earnings potential when inflation and especially hyper-inflation are at issue (never mind actually measurable), I find it very difficult not to recommend to clients putting a very substantial portion of their savings and investments into physical silver and gold.  I say physical because of delivery concerns (and a 2nd more specific concern) related to the paper PM market which present an unnecessary risk for the added convenience of paper PMs. (barring the requirements of a retirement plan I would never choose paper over physical, 3 years ago I told my mother and father to take the penalty and get into physical 100%, they didn't of course, being old and all, but they wish they had).

*I hold a non-text book view of Japan's deflation and lost decades.

**A pure type gold standard won't work because of deflation traps.  Additionally I believe that total of all PM's in human possession are inability to represent the overall value of energy being exchanged globally, this reduces its ability to adequately represent value in trade.  In monetary theory something else will be required.  Until it's found and implemented successfully PMs will be gaining value over time.