here is a report which has some data.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/124925838
as for this time is different, it sort of depends on your perspective. Nassim Taleb gives a good story in his book, Fooled by Randomness. Picture a farmer who feeds a turkey every monring for 3 years, and weighs him each evening. If you plot the turykey's weight over time, there would be an almost perfect linear relationship. If you are the turkey, and you take this perspective, you will be very happy to see the farmer right up until Thanksgiving morning when he chops your head off. The point is the time frame of your sample is not sufficiently broad.
if you look at the GSR and only look back to a starting point after the US demonetized silver in 1871, you will come away with an impression that a 'normal' GSR is one thing, whereas if you look back to earlier periods you will have a very different view. Which is corret? I don't know, i dont' have a crystal ball. But if you think that the only relevant data is data from the government paper era, then you might as well go long the stock market and forget pm's. On the other hand, silver was actually used as money for most of the pre-1871 data, so to some extent those 4 milennia of data are distinguishable. But i do think the GSR is compressing, and will continue to do so over the next 5-10 years.
Another way to think about this is that after the U.S. civil war, which was won by the north with greenbacks, fiat paper money began to ascend across the world. At the same time, gold and silver gradually stopped being used as money. Recently, sometime since 2000, the trend has reversed. Its a trickle right now. i'm not saying that the gov is going to replace clad quarters with silver ones. but people have begun to look at pms as money again. central banks are buying. so this is what makes me believe that that GSR will compress. In fact, less than 2 years ago it broke long term support at 38, and reached about 32.
[img]http://goldprice.org/charts/history/gold_5_year_silver.png[\img]
Ray, I view silver as money, just like gold. The world views silver as slightly less good than gold. But the demand for silver at current prices is outstripping demand. ASE sales now consume 100% of domestic mine production. as prices of both gold and silver rise, people are going to buy silver dollars and eagles when they can't afford gold eagles. Right now, the mint sells about an equal amount in dollar terms of gold and silver. When gold is $5,000 an oz, they will be selling much less of it. You also have Carlos Salinas Price lobbying for the remonetization of silver in Mexico.
let me say it differently if you don't like thinking of it in terms of substitution. I understand that is hard to see because few central banks hold silver.
what is happening is central banks and private citizens went from disinvesting pms to investing in pms. Primarily this has been in gold, but increasingly in silver. the more gold is seen as money, the more people will view silver as money. I don't subscribe to the full Butler theory that silver will reach parity with gold. its more a derivative of gold. But everytime a hedge fund buys real gold, they are saying FRNs are not money. and the more that this idea gains currency, the more that silver is viewed as superior to FRNs.
in other words, the GSR has fallen to 50, and yet almost no hedge funds are buying and taking delivery of silver, while a few are buying and taking delievery of gold. soon they will be buying and taking deliver of silver, and that is when the GSR will really compress. Unlike Butler, I think the long term target is 16, and it may overshoot it a bit. That said, i'm taking my chips off well before that.