I fail to understand how JPM et al can control the price of a physical market transaction between willing buyers and sellers of actual metal by selling silver that they don't have. If AUMN, for instance, has silver at its mine in Mexico and Apple needs it to manufacture iPhones why would they look to a fictitious paper market controlled by JPM to determine the price? I would think the price should be more likely to be determined by how badly, in relative terms, AUMN needs to sell or Apple needs to buy. Wouldn't there have to be a surplus of actual metal in the physical system to keep the price down? If JPM's actions are illegal, why don't sellers in the real physical market initiate a legal action against them? The mind boggles.