"I'm not the kind of conspiracy buff that many of my friends in the industry are," Lundin wrote, "but it's hard to look at silver and not see some hidden hands at work (especially considering who holds so much of the metal in both physical and paper forms while acting as custodian for the biggest silver exchange-traded fund)."

Of course, Lundin meant investment bank JPMorgan Chase and silver ETF SLV.

Why anyone would invest in silver or the other precious and monetary metals with JPMorgan Chase can be explained only by ignorance.

In the last decade, the bank has pleaded guilty to five felonies and has paid more than a billion dollars in government fines and civil lawsuit settlements, including a fine of $920 million for manipulation of the monetary metals markets by some of its traders:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/jpmorgan-chase-co-agrees-pay-920-million-connection-schemes-defraud-precious-metals-and-us

But silver market manipulation long has been bigger than even JPMorgan Chase. 

Indeed, silver price suppression has been U.S. government policy since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Coinage Act of 1965, which removed silver from the country's money.

Signing the act into law, Johnson proclaimed:

"If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content":

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-signing-the-coinage-act

https://www.gata.org/node/15838