From Ed Steer:

As one would have expected after the Fannie and Freddie news over the weekend, both gold and silver were off to the races as soon as the Globex trading system opened for business in the Far East early Monday morning. This lasted until Hong Kong opened. Then things went flat until the London open when a slow decline began...which lasted until shortly after 6:00 a.m. NY time. Both metals then rallied into the Comex open, and except for a brief spike in gold shortly after that, it was all downhill from there. The decline accelerated the moment that London closed for the day. The Monday charts for both gold and silver ended up looking suspiciously like their Friday counterparts. Here's the Kitco silver graph for your perusal.

The US$, which had fallen out of bed during early morning trading in the Far East, 'miraculously' reversed course and the US futures markets roared higher...as the world's stock markets feasted on the 'good' F&F news. How anyone can read anything positive into that fiasco is beyond me. Some cartoonists had a field day with it.

Yesterday was another low in silver for this move. Ted Butler says that everything that the boyz are doing now shows that they are only after the silver market. They are desperate to cover their shorts...by forcing the price lower and getting as many spec longs to cover as possible. The boyz have lots of gold they can get their hands on if they absolutely have to deliver bullion...but the cupboards are virtually bare for good delivery silver. All we can do is watch, because the authorities will not help save us from these criminals. We're all being raped, and even the mining companies won't lift a finger to help themselves...let alone us! How can they help when they're all bent over like that?

So...until the boyz are through doing whatever they have to do...and doing it in whatever way they have to do it...the silver chart will continue to look like this in the short-term. Click here.

And finally, here's some silver news that arrived in my in-box last night via GATA's Chris Powell. Border Gold, which is the largest bullion dealer in western Canada, "has no silver to sell other than a few Olympic coins at $17 a coin....They are not even taking any orders." When asked "how they can stay in business when the market was like this, she said she didn't really know what to think." She said, and I quote, "Our product would be flying out the door at ANY price if we had it." My bullion dealer in Edmonton is in exactly the same position. I would think that this predicament would be familiar to all the bullion dealers in the world right now. And all this is happening with silver at US$11.97 as I write this...about half the price it was back in March.

I've got a double header from James Turk over at goldmoney.com today. His first piece was obviously written on Sunday evening with the US$ heading for the basement. It's entitled "Does the Buck Stop Here?". The greenback is certainly hugely overbought, so its days at these lofty levels are numbered. The US$ rally will probably end the same day that the bullion banks cover their last possible silver short position. Maybe that was yesterday. The link is here.

Here's the second offering from James Turk. In an essay excerpted from the latest issue of his Freemarket Gold & Money Report, James muses about two kinds of people...people who fail to consider the possibility that they don't know everything, and people whose skepticism is not only healthy but profitable. Turk's musing is directed particularly at those who are unaware of...or just decline to address the evidence of gold market manipulation that has been amassed and reported by GATA. The essay is entitled "Thinking Like "Fat Tony" and the link is here.

I look at the world out there and just shake my head. My opinion hasn't changed one iota. You can take the entire world's economic, financial and monetary system and drop in a dumpster. But that band plays on...regardless of the angle of the deck.....!

See you tomorrow.

Casey Research correspondent-at-large Ed Steer is a keen observer of the financial scene and a board member of GATA.org.