No doubt one of the more negative days, amongst many, in the silver pits thanks to the banksters and their monthly options expiry attack. Anyway, the article below clearly shows that physical metal shortages have been evident over the past year around the globe.

Regards - VHF

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INDIAN SILVER

By Tehmaas S. Gorimar

November 15, 2011

The greatest demand for physical silver – a little over half of the total – is coming from China and India. About two-thirds of total Indian silver demand comes from the rural area. In rural India, silver is almost the sole form of savings, since gold is now affordable to only a few. Let us assume, conservatively, that the average Indian farmer manages to save the rupee equivalent of $100 in a good harvest year. Yes, let’s assume just $100. There are almost 250 million farmers in India. Supporting these farmers and their families are rural businesses that mostly take the form of mom-and-pop stores. Add all this up, and the total agrarian population is around 800 million. Let us assume that each one of these folks saves $100 a year, under favorable harvest conditions. There is a great distrust of banks among rural Indians; so let us assume that, at least, 300 million people, out of the total rural population of 800 million, will put their individual savings of $100 this year (India has had a good monsoon this year) into silver. This gives us a total savings pool of $30 billion. At $30 per ounce, it is possible that the entire above-ground supply of silver could be gone this winter, courtesy of the Indian rural population, all by itself. If silver falls to $20 per ounce, the average Indian villager is going to scream with delight when he discovers how much more silver his rupees are going to buy.

I shall go out on a limb and say that the shortage of physical silver that we saw last April will be magnified, several fold, this time around. And, if anyone wishes to challenge the fact that the shortage of physical silver last April (before the brutal collusive actions by the bullion banks and the COMEX) was real, all you have to do is go to the archives of Indian newspapers like The Business Standard, The Financial Express and The Economic Times to read these stories.

I, personally, was on the phone, almost every day, last April, to keep track of events as they were unfolding in India. For the greater part of the month, India’s two major, silver refineries had stopped working, altogether, because of a shortage of raw material, and the only silver that was being traded was scrap.