Rich:

Listening to Puplava, Sprott, Morgan, Chilton et al in the interviews previously posted I heard that the physical/industrial market is relatively unaffected by the silver prices we are seeing in the paper world. The point was made that large physical users of metals deal in long term contracts made with the refiners. Maybe the battery manufacturers have recently learned that their contracted supply prices are going up significantly. Who knows? I recommend listening to some of those interviews by the way. One speaker said that the paper trades on Feb. 29 represented over 500 million ounces, not 225 million - about 2/3 of the annual world production. And about half of that traded in 15 or 20 minutes! Proving manipulation was said to be a challenging legal exercise by another speaker but that type of trading shouldn't require a lot of investigation. Ted Butler said he first contacted the CRTC about silver manipulation 30 years ago. Got to admire his perseverance.