The Hunt silver case refers to the trial in 1988 in which the jury found Bunker Hunt, Herbert Hunt, Lamar Hunt, and several of their associates liable for manipulating the silver market during 1979 and 1980 and awarded the plaintiff Minpeco, a Peruvian government-owned metals marketing firm, $192 million in damages. The Hunt silver case unites the extraordinary price moves of a major commodity, the esoteric trading strategies within futures markets, the remarkable Hunt family, and the legal fencing culminating in a six-month trial. Minpeco v. Hunt and the companion proceedings brought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Division of Enforcement will always attract people wanting to understand commodity markets or complex litigation.

Because my main academic interest is commodity markets, and because I, who served as an expert for the defense, have continued to be intrigued by the litigation initiated against the Hunts, I have written this book. I may be suspected of bias, but the experts for the winning side, not surprisingly, are less inclined to reflect on the strength, consistency, and hidden assumptions of the various types of economic analysis I describe here. To be sure, I continue to believe that much of the economic evidence did not indicate a “corner” of the silver market and I continue to be troubled that some little-understood but perfectly normal aspects of commodity markets were portrayed as perversions.