u.s. banks still dominate gold, silver shorts

http://www.stockhouse.com/Columnists/2009/Jul/13/U-S--banks-still-dominate-COMEX-gold,-silver-short#aComment

From the above:

"The most recent report was for bank positioning as of July 7. As of that report exactly three U.S. banks held a total of 528 COMEX contracts long gold and a total of 116,985 contracts short gold for a total net short position of 116,457 COMEX 100-ounce contracts. A net short position benefits if prices fall.

A net short position of 116,457 contracts is equal to 11.65 million ounces, or about 322 tonnes of gold metal".

QUESTION:

Who are the counter parties to these contract short positions. I'm sort of a bit over all this talk of conspiracy theories with gold price suppression. I tried emailing GATA this question but the contact page kept giving me an undefined error.

The counter parties to these short positions must either be the dumbest or slowest learners in history if it is indeed a fact that banks have deliberately kept taking short positions to suppress the price of gold. If there are no counter parties then there can be no gold price suppression so who in gods name are the counter parties.

Something just doesn't add up and I beginning to think it's the conspiracy theory.