"Do the traders who lost money in the recent price collapse of silver have a reason to believe that their money is now in the pockets of these two or three U.S. banks?"

Hi VHF. Shortly after the Great Silver crash, I was trying to figure out what could have motivated those who were responsible for such a large price decline. After a bit of head scratching I figured it had to be someone who was so desperate for cash that they would risk openly and blatantly manipulating Silver (& Gold) paper prices on such a large-scale that it moved prices way out of whack with ongoing shortages of bullion in the physical markets. Now Butler's latest piece confirmed my suspicions that it had to be one of the US Banks in a desperate bid to raise capital and in the process shore up their flagging balance sheets for another couple of weeks (at the expense of PM investors as usual) instead of embarrassing themselves yet another time with hat in hand at the Fed's begging bowl window. I also wonder how much money these same banks have raked in during this latest operation by Illegal and normal due course shorting the sh*t of of PM stocks. Just don't be surprised when the SEC fails to call an inquiry to find out who is killing the PM & resource stocks. Maybe we should encourage resource companies to make more substantial political campaign contributions and perhaps that'll inspire the regulators to help us get justice as this strategy seems to have worked well for US Financials recently ;) At any rate what is most enlightening about Ted's information is the fact non-US financials (now friends of Gold & Silver?) were not part of this latest operation in any meaningful way. This revelation combined with the dramatic dropoff in Gold Accord Central Bank sales, combined with persistent acute shortages in physical markets, suggests to me the US has lost key allies in the fight against Gold & Silver and if this is true, it won't take long for these markets to recover and the stage has been set for PMs to make new all time highs with fewer enemies of Gold standing on the battlefield (more like chickens cowering in the darkness of anonymity, complicit with a wall of "regulators" whose job is to block any and all light shining onto what amounts to yet another high profile financial scam that not unlike illegal Naked Shorting, has bilked $Billions out of the pockets of legitimate investors.)