From Ed Steer:

Gold didn't do much in Far East trading until later in the day in Hong Kong. A small rally started that got hit shortly after London opened. Every little rally attempt [including the little one in Hong Kong] got sold off by some not-for-profit seller before it could develop any legs to the upside. The top in the gold price was at the London open...and the low of the day was at the London close. From the London close, gold rallied about $15 right into the close of electronic trading on the Globex at 5:15 in New York.

Silver, which I mentioned yesterday was the metal that the bullion banks are really after, got it in the neck again. It traded exactly the same as gold through Far East trading...smallish rally into the London open...hit for 30 cents...and then proceeded to trade sideways until the London p.m. gold fix. From that point, the floor traders working for the big U.S. bullion banks in the Comex precious metals pits, got the word to pull their bids...and they did exactly that. Silver dropped 50 cents in three tiny little waterfall declines spaced over three hours and change. Silver gained about 20 cents back between the low and the close of Globex trading. The top for silver was the London open...and the bottom came shortly before floor trading ended on the Comex. As I said once before this week...no profit-maximizing seller ever trades like this...ever!

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In keeping with the other open interest numbers we've seen this week, the o.i. numbers in gold for Wednesday were once again from the Twilight Zone. Gold open interest was higher again. This time by only 642 contracts...but up nevertheless. Silver took a big drop...finally. It's o.i. dropped a very large 3,165 contracts...pretty well negating Tuesday's big jump in open interest. It was interesting [and a bit surprising] to see the HUI finish in the plus column yesterday.

The COT report will be issued at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time today...and to be perfectly honest, virtually nothing of what has happened this week will be in it. The bullion banks went to work on the prices on Tuesday...the COT cut-off date...but they have a cute habit of not reporting things on time...and it will of interest to see what, if anything, shows up in this report. We'll have to wait until next Friday...March 6th...before we have a clear picture of what really happened this past week...and also [hopefully] including what happens on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

In other gold news...yesterday was the last delivery day for February gold...and 276 contracts were delivered, with Bank of Nova Scotia being the big issuer [209 contracts]...and Goldman Sachs, once again, being the big stopper [185 contracts]. The Comex warehouse silver stocks declined 306,504 ounces. GLD added 10,000 ounces and SLV added nothing. I see in arabianbusiness.com that a "Gold-backed shariah-compliant tradeable security is set for a Dubai roll-out next week." And lastly, I mentioned yesterday that Dennis Gartman had gone long 'one unit' of gold on Wednesday. Well, he sold it on Thursday. Here's the usual N.Y. commentator on the subject...",The Gartman Letter abruptly sold the gold unit bought yesterday, disliking the day's action. Abrupt moves by this party are usually significant." We'll see. Oops...one more thing! It's been reported on the Net, and confirmed by my bullion dealer, that China is no longer making silver pandas.

The 'other news' yesterday was off-the-charts terrible. The world's economic, financial and monetary system is imploding at a frightening speed. From the German paper ,i>spiegel.de, is this headline..."The Steep Decline of the British Economy". In a story at marketwatch.com..."New home sales plunge 10.2% in January to a record low"..."The inventory at the end of January represented a record-high 13.3 month supply at the January sales pace." And in another marketwatch.com story "GM fourth quarter loss widens to $9.6 billion". Reuters..."U.S. jobless claims up, continued claims at record". Reuters..."U.S. durable goods orders fall to 6-year low in January". Reuters..."U.S. list of 'problem banks' soars nearly 50% to 252 in 4th quarter" reports FDIC. [Thousands of banks will fail before this is all over. - Ed] Bloomberg..."JPMorgan Chase & Co said it is cutting up to 14,000 jobs, more than previously disclosed, as it tries to reduce costs in the face of a slumping economy and higher credit losses." And lastly...Bloomberg...the headline reads "California's Newly Poor Push Social Services Network to Brink...The worst financial crisis in seven decades is forcing thousands of previously middle-income [$60-100,000 annually] workers to seek social services, overwhelming local agencies, clinics and nonprofits.

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The first story is about commercial real estate space in New York City. It appears that the biggest banks and security firms have already given up 8 million square feet of office space...and the situation is only going to get worse. The Bloomberg story entitled "Banks Vacate Towers Pushing Empty NYC Space to Record"...is linked here.

The next story is from Reuters out of Zurich. The headline reads "Swiss party wants to punish U.S. for UBS probe"...one of the things that the Swiss People's Party [SVP] wants to do is repatriate all Swiss-owned gold that is currently being held in the United States. It would be interesting to see them try. The link to the story is here.

Apparently a story about gold that I ran yesterday out of The Wall Street Journal required a subscription to read...so all you got was the first couple of pargraphs. Here's the whole story entitled "Gold coin shortage as demand soars". The link is here.

And lastly, as I mentioned earlier, there was a story in the German Paper Spiegel about how quickly the British economy was falling apart. Here's another story about that very thing. It's from The Telegraph in London and is headlined "The people say they'll keep calm and carry on...but for how long?" The link is here.

The popular notion that an increase in the stock of money is socially and economically beneficial and desirable is one of the great fallacies of our time. - Hans F. Sennholz

I see in the King Report issued at midnight last night that Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, says that "U.S. GDP could conceivably drop 10% this quarter." And Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said that it's "impossible to say" how much capital will be required to shore up the British banking system." The same could be said for the rest of the world's banking system as well. As a matter of fact...nothing can save the financial system now. The world is going to hell in the proverbial hand-basket...and it's only a matter of time until we see a total collapse...and probably not too much time, either.

Have a great weekend...and take part of it to track down as much physical gold and silver you can find...and afford.