"Even the grains, are getting smashed as hedge funds and other large specs incur huge losses in silver and are now dumping everything as a result."

Is this guy serious? Because the comex raised margin on silver the rest of the market tanked? LOL! More like the other way around - big players pushed their bets on the dollar/oil spread, the dollar carry, index futures and so forth, and THAT cascaded into gold and silver. Those are the big markets - gold and silver are tiny by comparison. This guy's got cause and effect completely reversed.

Like I said before, look at $USD for an explanation. It was approaching a critical support level. Anyone that pushed that bet was fighting not just the Fed, but every central bank on the planet.

I agree with the gold camp - it's all about massive fiat money printing to bail out the big banks, but people.... you can't have your cake and eat it too! That money's got to go somewhere, and gold and silver are just as easy to game as any other trade.

Wheat, corn, soybeans, oil, all these commodities are traded in the futures for very good reasons that go all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia: risk management. But gold is not a commodity, and silver only to a minor degree.

Why do we even have a futures market in gold and silver is the question you should be asking, not whether this or that margin level is too loose or too tight. You're just playing their game when you make those kind of arguments.

There's a huge market in conspiracy theories - a lot of people make a good living off of them. I won't name names, I think you know who I mean. Well guess what? TBTB like it that way. It keeps people's attention off the real issues. Which are? Well, look around. Massive deficits, excessive taxation, unpayable future social commitments. Wars and military occupations sucking up precious resources, not to mention lives. The resources themselves - oil, food, water, all getting scarce. How about that spill in the gulf? Or those reactors over in Japan? Seen any of that in the news lately?

I'm not against gold or silver, it's the noise and misdirection surrounding them that I object to. Consider this. In some parts of the world a married woman can't own anything more than she can carry on her person. She can also be divorced easily and tossed out on the street. So when she does gets married, her relatives shower her with gold and silver - all in the form of jewelry she can wear. That way she will never be destitute - she'll always have enough to start over. Do you think these women care what happens on the comex? Do they check the commitment of traders every day on their ipod? No. They have the physical, which they know is always worth something, so they're good to go - physically if need be.

Trade in futures or paper and sooner or later you'll get burned - it's the nature of the game. Take delivery, and you don't have to worry about the price because now you have insurance. That's the true role of gold and silver in a fiat world. Everything else is just noise.

</rant>

ebear