From Ed Steer:

Gold didn't do much during Far East trading on Friday morning. However, that all changed shortly after London opened for the day. From there, and until shortly after the Comex open, gold got sold off $15. A slight recovery ended at the London close...and the low of the day was set in electronic trading shortly after trading ended in the Comex trading session.

The silver price followed a similar pattern, but the selloff was even more pronounced. The low price was set shortly after Comex began trading. Ted Butler said that it was the same old pattern, hit the metals when they are thinly traded, and then keep them down throughout New York trading, where the price can be easily controlled.

Open interest changes for Thursday are as follows. Gold o.i dropped a whopping 18,379 contracts to 371,826...and silver o.i declined a smallish 205 contracts to 92,854.

The Commitment of Traders report for silver showed that the bullion banks in the Commercial category reduced their net short position by 2,159 contracts...which is a fair chunk. By the way, one silver contract is equal to 5,000 troy ounces. In gold, the bullion banks actually increased their net short position by 5,605 contracts. One gold contract is 100 troy ounces. In physical terms, the bullion banks are now net short 18.1 million ounces of gold. In a nutshell, the COT was bullish for silver...and bearish for gold. To see these changes in living, breathing colour...click here for the COT graph in silver, and click here for the graph in gold.

In other gold news, there were only a handful of deliveries in both gold and silver on the Comex on Friday...nothing worth highlighting here. The U.S. Mint updated their eagles numbers again by a smallish amount in both. In gold eagles, another 7,500 were added to March's total...bringing it up to 103,500. In silver eagles, another 43,000 were reported....bringing March's total up to 2,450,000. Even though there are still two business day left in the month, these are probably the final numbers for March. Year-to-date for the first quarter of 2009, there have been 309,000 gold eagles and a whopping 6,475,000 silver eagles minted. These are huge numbers...and a record number for silver eagles. Over at the Comex-approved warehouses, a smallish 31,320 ounces of silver were added. The GLD ETF added around 75,000 ounces...and SLV was unchanged.

There was an interesting gold story posted at iafrica.com that was filed from Cape Town, South Africa on Friday . "The [South African] Reserve Bank is planning to increase its hoard of gold, as it juggles the different currencies in which its reserves are denominated. At present, according to Governor Tito Mboweni, around 11% of the country's reserves are in gold. The bank governor "said he has no target for the gold reserves to reach, but will just begin to increase the proportion held in gold slowly."

For some perspective into the all-important U.S. real estate market, today's chart illustrates the U.S. median price of a single-family home over the past 39 years. Not only did housing prices increase at a rapid rate from 1991 to 2005, but that rate accelerated. Housing prices have dropped 33% from the 2005 peak. In fact, a home buyer who bought the median priced single-family home at the 1979 peak, has actually seen that home lose value [1.6% loss]. Not an impressive performance considering that nearly three decades have passed. It is worth noting that the median priced home has moved back to the top of a trading range that existed from the late 1970s in the mid-1990s. [As I've said many times...call me in 2013 and we'll talk about a housing bottom in the U.S. - Ed]

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I had a real hard time narrowing it down to four stories...but that's what I have today. The first one is from the hallowed pages of Forbes Magazine. The headline reads..."Did Goldman Goose Oil? How Goldman Sachs was at the center of the oil trading fiasco that bankrupted pipeline giant Semgroup" Would a prestigous firm such as Goldman Sachs do such a thing, you ask??? Yep, they'd "rip your face off" in a New York minute. If you read the piece I posted from NPR yesterday about Frank Partnoy, it's obvious that the Wall Street criminal culture is still alive and well at the U.S. Treasury....sorry, I meant Goldman. It's well worth the read...and the link is here.

The next story is from The Times of London. The headline reads..."Is there any gold inside Fort Knox, the world's most secure vault?" It appears that Texas Congressman Ron Paul has "21 co-sponsors for a Bill to conduct an independent audit of the Federal Reserve System...including its claims to Fort Knox gold." Chris Powell, GATA's secretary treasurer, is also quoted in this article as well. And as Ron Paul also said..."The American people deserve to know the truth." This article is also worth the read and the link is here.

The next story is a ten-page report. In it, GATA Board of Directors member Adrian Douglas, has combined data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [OCC] to show that the suppression of the prices of gold and silver in the last several years correlates exactly with the growing concentration of the short positions held by two U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC. As you are aware, I've spoken on this issue many times. Here's a far more detailed analysis. It's a little on the technical side, but you should be able to follow the broad strokes of the idea with little problem. The essay is entitled "Pirates of the COMEX" and the link to the pdf file is here.

And lastly is this longish piece from Rolling Stone Magazine. It's most excellent, but I must advise you in advance that it is "R" rated. There's some very naughty language in it...so be forewarned! It's entitled "The Big Takeover: The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution." I thank John Grandits from Casey Research for providing this story. So pack a lunch...and then click here.

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Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. - Charles Mackay

Here's a youtube.com Beatles video from Roy Stephens, one of my regular readers. I was about 20 when this song came out. It's Get Back from their Let It Be album. In it, Billy Preston played piano and became the only guest artist to ever get a credit on a Beatles single. Also on the clip, you can briefly see a young Mick Jagger & Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones in the booth. Phil Spector [their producer on this album] is the guy with the glasses. So turn up your speakers and then click here.

As I sit in front of my computer in the wee hours of Saturday morning, I try to picture the future...in the short, medium and long term...and I see nothing. Not a shred of hope to seen anywhere. It's like a nightmare that one can never wake up from. In the end, only physical gold and silver will be left standing when the current economic, financial and monetary systems are swept into the trashcan of history. I hope you have your share.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend...and I'll see you here bright and early on Tuesday morning.

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