I concur 100% with you Edgy. The problem likely lies in finding a critical mass of producers who arer not in debt to the very forces that would strive to perpertuate the current system. It would likely be a tall order to find that many primary silver producers of any significant size who have clean balance sheets. The next possible tier of producers to potentially tap from would be those who are merely beholden to either privately owned banks, or sovereign wealth funds (if there are any) or any financial institution/group that is at least one step removed from the primary lenders (also a tall order I would think) . But the latter situations might still not be enough to overcome any trepidation that certain mining CFOs might hold, due to their close associations with the financial industry which they collectively rely upon. (Perhaps/most likely some have been or currently are on the Board of Directors of brand name financial institutions, and they would risk/fear being blackballed/shunned).

The 62,00 ounce silver (million dollar) question remains, what critical percentage of silver production would need to be withheld to appreciably move the silver market? Obviously this depends on the tightness of supply at any given time, the determinations of which are difficult at best- whether this is simply due to the complexity of the calculations, or as many silver stackers would believe, due to the willful systemic obfuscation of the actual numbers involved.

...But a case in point..although I don't follow the oil market very closely I do recall that ~ several years ago I remember coming across WorldWide oil production/utilization numbers in the order of 92 million barrels/day. Supposedly the oil production now exceeds utilization by 2 million barrels/day or so (feel free to correct my numbers) , and this is supposedly enough surplus to drop the price per barrel by nearly 50% from $100/barrel? If this is true then the obverse should be true, and in addition one would think this is also true for silver as a commondity. Perhaps less than a 5% curtailment of silver production could effectively move the price substantially. We might never know as I don't think that any entity has been able to produce a grapgh of silver oz production versus price , in an unfettered non-manipulated market, where true price discovery would reign.

Cheers,

Luker