The BIS source is impeccable, unfortunately they hardly assume a global regulatory role, except for occasional warnings and issuing global banking best practice accounting rules (Basel II) with which as yet not many banks are compliant for reasons we all know.

The silver derivatives represent some 15'447'154'472 (15 billion) ounces or 480460 tonnes at $12.3 per ounce this represents approx 17 years global silver mine production (2007 global figures 894.5 million ounces) not counting a declining silver mine production and physical inventories going close to just in time stocks.

http://www.silverinstitute.org/suppl...

What would be interesting to know who places these bets and who are the counterparties, most likely the are the same and are the central banks as the biggest market interventionists, manipulators through their conduit trading partners e.g. JP Morgan for the Fed, Deutsche Bank for the ECB, etc. Vital is that it remains undercover, hence the strong continuing driving forces for light regulation so they can remain under the radar screen.

For recollection the JP Morgan silver derivatives represent 353'983'740 ounces or 11010 tonnes. Table 9: $4.354 billion in precious metals

http://www.occ.gov/ftp/release/2009-...

The figures for silver, gold and other derivatives have detached from any economic reality. A deleveraging has become virtually impossible without a systemic failure of the central banks and the system, this is the fundamental reason of their continuing desperate further market interventions, until the last man standing, as their (paper) means are unlimited this can still go on for quite a while. Until physical take off by industry, jewelry, the ETFs, silver coins and on the Comex overwhelms the paper manipulation at some point in the future. Physical take off at the Comex will be key.

From the Bill Moyers Journal

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: You are.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: In the Savings and Loan debacle, we developed excellent ways for dealing with the frauds, and for dealing with the failed institutions….We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong…

Geithner's Stress Test "A Complete Sham," Former Federal Bank Regulator Says

Posted Apr 06, 2009 10:00am EDT by Aaron Task in Investing, Recession, Banking

Related: UBS, C, BAC, XLF, SKF, FAS

The bank stress tests currently underway are “a complete sham,” says William Black, a former senior bank regulator and S&L prosecutor, and currently an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. “It’s a Potemkin model. Built to fool people.” Like many others, Black believes the “worst case scenario” used in the stress test don’t go far enough.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker...

Excerpts from April 3, 2009

Geithner's dirty little secret
By F William Engdahl

Today, five US banks, according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.

The top three are, in declining order of importance: JPMorgan Chase, which holds a staggering $88 trillion in derivatives; Bank of America with $38 trillion, and Citibank with $32 trillion. Number four in the derivatives sweepstakes is Goldman Sachs, with a mere $30 trillion in derivatives; number five, the merged Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank, drops dramatically in size to $5 trillion. Number six, Britain's HSBC Bank USA, has $3.7 trillion.

The government bailout of AIG, at more than $180 billion so far, has primarily gone to pay off AIG's credit default swap obligations to counterparty gamblers Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America, the banks who believe they are "too big to fail". In effect, these institutions today believe they are so large that they can dictate the policy of the federal government. Some have called it a bankers' coup d'etat. It definitely is not healthy.

Geithner and Wall Street are desperately trying to hide this dirty little secret because it would focus voter attention on real solutions. The federal government has long had laws in place to deal with insolvent banks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) places the bank into receivership, its assets and liabilities are sorted out by independent audit. The irresponsible management is purged, stockholders lose and the purged bank is eventually split into smaller units and when healthy, sold to the public. The power of the five mega banks to blackmail the entire nation would thereby be cut down to size. Ooohh. Uh Huh?