So I found a chart showing silver prices vs margin requirements on Linkedin of all places [1]. Yes, margin requirements change and the exchange tries to protect the market in times of high volatility but increasing the margin requirements significantly means everybody has to put up more collateral even if you're significantly in the black.

That's my point: they're intentionally trying to crash the market. The analsysi that they're defending the banks from a short squeeze seems to fit the available data [2].

As for China, the government is ensuring their local industries have sufficient silver supply, which is particularly important for solar.

The US government has a lot of power to do similar to this but refuse to use it because it would hurt profits. I'm thinking specifically of the Defense Production Act, which could've been used to lower oil and gas prices in 2020-2022. Instead we passed on the costs to consumers, let oil companies export to the world and let them make record profits.

[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryanlemand_this-chart-is-wort...

[2]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/everything-investors-know-his...