Squeezing Silver
“With vivid descriptions of characters and events, attorney Mark Cymrot brings alive crucial moments and memorable tensions in the 1988 trial that unveiled one of America’s most colorful and creative financial deceptions: the 1979-1980 scheme to rig the world silver market.”
Ann Hagedorn
Staff Reporter who covered the trial, Wall Street Journal
About Squeezing Silver
Go inside the courtroom of one of the most important trials of recent decades. Meet famed Texas oil billionaire, Nelson Bunker Hunt, who along with Saudi royalty, manipulated silver prices from $9-$51 in 1979-80. Glimpse their lifestyle through meetings held at thoroughbred horse events, five-star hotels and posh restaurants. And ponder the surprising conflicts of interest at the commodity exchanges that stayed the hands of the regulators, led to the silver market crash and the first too-big-to-fail bailout engineered by Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to save the US economy. This suspenseful story concludes with a $197 million jury verdict, one of the largest in the US in the 1980s.
Unearthing the intricacies of a worldwide conspiracy, tracing billions into brokerage firms and seemingly impenetrable Swiss bank accounts, and shaping a narrative to convince a jury is the work of a trial lawyer. But how is it done in the face of talented advocates mocking your case as a “broad daylight conspiracy” or a “cropped photograph?” In Squeezing Silver, Mark Cymrot explores his insights for legal thriller junkies and students of trial practice.
"The prospect of a trial against a notorious family that created a worldwide financial crisis was irresistible. I did not hesitate.
I assumed I was prepared. I had no concept of what awaited me. "
Prologue, Page xiii, Squeezing Silver
"I glanced over at our opponents. They were the adults; I was a youngster trying to act like an adult."
Page 5, Squeezing Silver
"Bunker wanted to come across as the hapless, misunderstood billionaire who just wanted to invest in a lot of silver and hang around thoroughbred horses. I wanted to expose him as a clever, lying manipulator who stole from a poverty-stricken country, thousands of other traders, and almost crashed the US economy."
Page 38, Squeezing Silver
"We had to introduce our jury – a transit inspector, a teacher, a retired policeman, a young salesman, a nurse, and a college professor – to an array of eccentric characters, the obscure mechanics of the world silver futures markets, and a complex story of secret meetings and coordinated trading that had unlawfully raised silver prices."
Page 6, Squeezing Silver
