The Commodities Exchange (Comex) doesn't trade silver or gold. It trades contracts for silver and gold (and other commodities). These "contracts" are the paper referred to in the term "paper gold". If you take control of a contract, the contract will have a date and price on it. If you're holding the contract on that date it should mean you're buying the commodity for that price--except most contracts holders don't actually take delivery, they roll it over to the next contract period or take the cash equivalent. So even though they can't inflate the supply of gold, they can inflate the supply of contracts thereby bringing down the price. The vulnerability, of course, is if the paper price gets too low then too many will take delivery and wipe out the inventory of the real commodity (because there are more contracts than the underlying commodity they are supposed to represent) and Comex would default. And then...financial apocalypse.