TrailerParkInvestmentAdvisor says:

Does anyone here think that this administration will let JPM go bankrupt? JPM is making this huge bet because they know they are playing with the house’s money. There is no downside for them. If their derivative bet fails, either the government or the Fed will give them more cash. I hope their short works out for them. Then we do not have to give them any money.

pcsmith says:

What are the current industrial demands for silver? Since the adoption of digital photography, the demand for film has dropped drastically.

And what is the current amount of silver being mined annually? I would be surprised if the tonnage produced has dropped.

bobbo, "its a shitty deal, but its the only deal you got!" says:

Since when can you eat silver?

Ha, ha.

The market spooked one way and then the other, the weaker members of the herd (ie, those without a computer directly connected to the Exchange) culled as the need/desire arises.

Mainstay says:

It seems like a mainstay of mankind from the dawn of time is simple greed
Even the wealthy never have enough
You would of thought that with all the stimulus whatever they would be satisfied
Woody Allen’s joke about stock broker being a professional who invested your money till it is all gone rings true today
Only the names , faces and titles are different
Greed remains a mainstay of human beings

soundwash says:

Welcome to the party..

-About time DU picked this up.

Max has only been pushing this for almost a month.

although.. we would have to also boycott food stamps and unemployment too, to really hurt them.

-because it is jpmorgan/chase bank that is contracted to handle all the transactions for both wherever plastic is used to dole out these two programs.

-s

ECA says:

#21..
THE STATEMENT IS WRONG..
the point is, HOW MANY people in the USA HAVE GUNS..less then 10%.
I would LOVE for 90% of the USA to OWN GUNS.
but this list does NOT consider gun collectors, NOR those that have more then 1 gun..(I know a few collectors that have Hundreds of guns.)
All it says is that there are 270,000,000 guns in the USA.

Now figure that out for China at 3.5% of 3-4 BILLION people.
In Switzerland, ALL persons are TRAINED to use weapons, as part of a Citizen militia.

ArianeB says:

#25

The commodities market is a zero sum game. Every time someone makes money, someone else loses money.

To simplify the market, lets limit it to two people. Investor A, who believes the price of silver will fall, and investor B, who believes the price of silver will rise. Investor A signs a contract to deliver 10,000 bars of silver to investor B by a certain delivery date, say 5 years from now, at a certain price, say $1000 a bar. Now investor A doesn’t actually own 10,000 bars, and investor B has no use for 10,000 bars. What happens is that in 5 years, investor B sells the 10,000 bars back to investor A at the current market value. The two delivery contracts cancel each other out, but if the price has dropped to $900 a bar, investor B owes investor A a million dollars, if the price rose to $1100 a bar, investor A owes investor B a million dollars.

Now there are not just two investors, there are thousands. So if A has a contract to sell 10,000 bars to B by 2016, investor A does not need to buy back the contract from B, he can buy instead from investor C, at any time during that 5 year window, hopefully when the price is lower, thus it is now C who owed B 10,000 bars. But B can sell that contract for 10,000 bars to investor D when the price is higher. Now C owes D 10,000 bars, while A and B are both richer. But then C and D can sell their contracts to others etc. as long as when 2016 rolls around everyone has bought enough contracts, to cancel out all the sell contracts.

The only people in the market that can sell without buying back are the mining companies that mine and refine new silver bars. The only people in the market who can buy without selling off are the industries that use silver. The contract buying and selling determines what the fair price is between the actual buyers and sellers.

J.P. Morgan has sold lots and lots of silver contracts betting that the price is going to go down. The term “naked short” does not really apply in commodities as it does in stocks BTW. They will be required to buy silver contracts to match their sells before the contracts are due. If the price goes down at any point during the life of those contracts, J.P. Morgan wins. If the price never goes down, J.P. Morgan will be forced to buy back contracts at much higher prices, losing big. Most likely they are hedging their bets in other markets.

chuck says:

Let’s see now, imagine 300,000,000 Americans all buy 1oz of silver. Maybe the price gets driven up to $60/oz during the buying frenzy.

That’s $18 billion total.
Roughly the amount spent in a week of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Banks probably do that much in foreign exchange in about 5 minutes. (probably less)

And how will this bankrupt the banks exactly?

Rob Leather says:

Hilariously two of these guys are English. In the UK Gold Coins are NOT taxed at VAT. So you can purchase Gold Sovereigns are near base mint value and not have to declare it, pay VAT on it. Nothing.

But instead, they are going for SILVER, which IS.

Errrr. Nice one guys.

dadeo says:

Seems to me a little like fighting fire w/fire..someone (bankers all, I’m sure) will rake in all the proceeds from the rush on silver . . You take down one, feed/create even more bankers.