It’s the sellers of paper silver that are taking it up the rear end. They sold the paper on the guarantee it could be redeemed at any time. They bet they could always buy the physical to fill the redemption. In the past they have offered the paper holders cash incentives to roll over their contracts. If that really isn’t working now, big time trouble.
I’m not certain on this, but I think that if they can’t supply the bullion they have to pay the paper holder current market price of the silver. That’s a shot in the shorts.
They’ve been manipulating the price of silver bullion by selling loads of paper for decades. They richly deserve all the pain they get. Will this be the big one that crushes the paper pushers and manipulators? Maybe, maybe not. The money printers at the central banks have a lot of incentive to find a way to keep supporting the artificial price and protect their fake money.
Thank you for that very lucid explanation!
And no, I can’t really remember much of the 60’s, so I guess I wasn’t there! ;-)