In 2011 the price of silver topped $48 per ounce, but just a few years later we’ve seen it collapse to such levels that it is now becoming nearly impossible to for mining companies to get it out of the ground and make any sort of profit.

Many believe the price of silver, and it’s precious metal counterpart gold, is being manipulated by top-tier financial organizations that include large investment firms as well as Western central banks. Through the use of heavy leverage and coordinated attacks it is believed that these ‘cartels’ are working to keep the price of silver and gold low in an effort to prevent these resources from supplanting the global reserve status of the U.S. dollar. It’s gotten so bad that the Chinese government has actually decided to open their own precious metals exchanges just to try and counter the manipulation.

Now, even the private mining sector is saying enough is enough.

In an interview with Future Money Trends, Future Majestic Silver Corp. CEO Keith Neumeyer says that manipulated paper markets are not representative of the physical price of silver. According to Neumeyer, it costs about $16.50 to get silver out of the ground and with it’s current “paper” spot price trading at about a dollar over that, it is becoming more and more difficult for mining companies to break even, let alone maintain profitable businesses.

Though the world produces about 800 million ounces of silver every year, paper traders are somehow able to control as many as one billion ounces of silver a day through the use of extreme leverage and derivatives. It is this leverage that has left many silver mining companies reeling.

Neumeyer has made a proposal to other mining company executives around the world and suggests that they combine their efforts to create their own cartels, kind of like what OPEC does with oil.

If we were to suspend production for just one month that would send ripples to the entire system. The supply is already tight. So it would be extremely interesting to see what would happen in a situation like that.

…

I not only encourage them [silver producers], I would suggest that we all get together and do exactly that. I think it would be a very exciting thing for all the silver companies to form a semi-cartel in a way similar to OPEC. I don’t see why we can’t do that.

I think we all agree that the paper market has no representation for the physical market… and I think it makes sense that we would all work together to sell our product to industry… and I would encourage all of them to pull back our silver.

We should pick a month in 2015 and say ‘We’re going to hold back silver for 30 days’ and see how the silver buyers respond to that.

(Watch at Future Money Trends)

Indeed, such a move would send ripples through the market. And though the paper markets are massive compared to the actual physical markets they represent, a one month hold on the majority of the silver production in the world could well drive prices to levels we haven’t see before, and perhaps end the massive manipulation once and for all.