On Sep 17 Jeff Nielson posted an article on SLV. I took issue with his belief that ETFs’ management fees were unrealistically cheap and thus another indicator they were a scam. Below is the exchange between Jeff and I on the matter.
Bron: You say “custodians of the vast majority of all the world’s bullion-ETFs – [...]

Further to my post on Gold ETFs, below are the figures for silver.

ETF/Custodial Facility
Silver Ounces as at July 2009
% share of Total Privately Held

ishares
283,831,312
20.3%

Central Fund/Trust of Canada
59,648,793
4.3%

Zurcher Kantonalbank
52,343,842
3.7%

ETF Securities
19,133,459
1.4%

GoldMoney
16,234,617
1.2%

Bullion Management Group
5,444,685
0.4%

Claymore
2,235,000
0.2%

e-Gold
85,244
0.0%

Silver “Products” Sub-total
438,956,951
31.4%

COMEX
118,227,405
8.4%

TOCOM
250,778
0.0%

Total Other Privately Held
842,564,866
60.2%

Total Privately Held
1,400,000,000
100.0%

Compared to gold, the silver ETFs provide more transparency, which is another way of saying there is less [...]

With gold looking to attack the USD 1000 level, it is fitting to review the new kid on the gold block – securitised bullion – that many say has been a contributor to gold’s resurgence. I say “new kid on the block” because gold ETFs are only seven years old whereas people have been storing [...]

Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge has posted an analysis of SLV’s bar list by “Project Mayhem Research” (PMR for short) that concludes:
During our research into the inventory lists of the iShares SLV and London-based ETFS physical silver funds, we discovered multiple anomalies which cannot be easily dismissed. These included the presence of internal duplicates, rough [...]

In December I published A Problem With GLD and SLV ETFs where I briefly perused the GLD prospectus.  It concluded, “For these reasons including (1) the quality of the gold is at issue, (2) no audit of the physical metal is permitted, (3) counter-party risk impregnates the investment vehicle and (4) there are strong conflicts of interest [...]