Supplies of silver have been tight now for over a year. This may not sound like the end of the cartel, but it will definitely have an impact on the cartel's fractional reserve Ponzi scheme! From last night's Midas:

Bolivia ... protests hitting silver mines
The Cartel controlled press managed to keep this major news from getting mainstream coverage! The world’s top two silver mines shut down for already 12 days and counting! You have to love this piece of propaganda….

QUOTE

"The loss of production might last for a longer time, since protesters seized a power station and are threatening to cut the mine's (San Cristobal) power supply," Commerzbank said in a commodities report on Thursday. "Yet the still very high inventories should be enough to compensate for a possible longer loss of production of this mine," the report said.

The San Cristobal mine is the world's third-largest producer of silver and the sixth-largest producer of zinc, according to Sumitomo.

END

I wonder which very high inventories of silver he is talking about?? The rapidly vaporizing inventories at the Comex or the LBMA that has multiple owners for each ounce!

And:

* Bolivian gov't seeks talks to resolve protest
* Production at Bolivia's two top silver mines affected
* High world inventories seen compensating lost output

LA PAZ, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Bolivia's government sought on on Thursday to defuse protests disrupting production at three mines, including two of the world's biggest silver deposits owned by Japan's Sumitomo Corp and U.S.-based Coeur D'Alene.

More than two weeks of protests over infrastructure in the mineral-rich Potosi region have hurt the mainstay mining industry in Bolivia, a major global producer of zinc, silver, tin and lead.

Coeur D'Alene said on Wednesday its San Bartolome mine, the world's largest pure silver mine, had been shut down for 12 days, while Sumitomo reported its silver-zinc-lead San Cristobal mine was forced to stop processing ore.

The combined output of the two mines accounts for about 83 percent of the nearly 1.1 million tonnes of fine silver Bolivia produced in 2009, according to mining ministry data.

San Cristobal was the top silver mine in Bolivia producing some 620,000 tonnes of fine silver in 2009, according to the government data.

World silver, zinc and lead prices were not affected by protests in Bolivia as investors focus on the U.S. economic recovery, traders said…