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BookmarkWith gold and silver rebounding, today acclaimed money manager Stephen Leeb told King World News that silver is now setting up to eclipse $100. Leeb believes that China, which has been the primary driver in the gold market, is now going to push the silver price over $100 as their consumption of physical silver is poised to skyrocket. Here is what Leeb had to say in this powerful and exclusive interview.
Leeb: “We are seeing massive demand for photovoltaics out of both Japan and China. We are also continuing to see massive demand for silver in the Middle-East for this type of energy infrastructure as well. Eric, KWN readers need to understand that the demand for silver is literally set to explode because of the enormous increases in demand for physical silver because of photovoltaics….
“While all of this is happening, the mainstream media is saying that China is about ready to fall apart. But the reality is that China plans to urbanize a remarkable 200 million people over the next 10 to 15 years. Well, the cost is roughly $50,000 per person. So China is going to be spending a massive amount of money for materials — copper, lead, zinc and especially silver.
As we speak, Eric, China has just raised their target for solar power. This is an incredibly important event for the silver market. That means more silver demand. They have just raised their target to more than 35 gigawatts by 2015, up from the current level of 7 gigawatts. China’s previous target was 21 gigawatts by 2015, so that’s a stunning increase of 67% above their previous target.
All of this is going to require more physical silver. Photovoltaics already consumes 10% of the entire silver market, and we will see an enormous surge in that number over the next five years. So there is going to be tremendous upward pressure on silver prices going forward because of China’s need to buildout solar capacity.
China is saying their target is 35 gigawatts, but I think they will be closer to 45 to 50 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2015. If you look at the rate at which they keep raising the 2015 target, who knows, they may have 100 gigawatts of solar capacity by the year 2020.
Eric, I am telling you that is going to require a lot of silver. There is simply not enough silver in the world to accommodate the demand for photovoltaics going forward. As I mentioned, photovoltaics is already using 10% of the world’s silver supply, well, look at what China has just announced and all of this means you are going to literally see an explosion in the price of silver in coming years.
If we look at Japan post-Fukushima, Japan is going to be in the market for solar in a big way in the future as well. All of this means more and more demand for physical silver. The message here for investors is not that silver will go from $20 to $50, but instead that silver will trade in the hundreds of dollars an ounce in a matter of years.”
