To me, it's always discouraging news to have Ed Steer alert us almost daily that the cartel is still taking on all comers by shorting everything in sight that's long. Never seemed to fail, that the more they keep piling up the shorts, sooner or later the price gets whacked.

It used to be that when word leaked out that there was a huge short position out there on something, there was a stampede to buy it knowing that the short would be forced to cover thereby goosing the price. Doesn't seem to work that way with gold and silver and the cartel. The more they short, the more everyone seems to flinch, since the roof is going to fall in instead of getting blown off as it should.

So the cartel lets the price move up a little now and then. How much does that cost them with their hedging techniques and big daddy as a backstop? What's troubling is that the cartel has been able to keep the price of gold and silver at a fraction of where it should be, inflation adjusted and then some, and by doing so have kept many of the miners dang near broke or profitless and, as such, a lousy investment. Just part of their agenda. Gets people to lose interest and look elsewhere.

As far as I'm concerned, the cartel is still winning this game hands down probably telling their quants to keep figuring out ways to make the charts dance and get us to think "this is it," and then pull the plug and punch our juniors in the stomach just for laughs. So, until we see gold and silver up another 50-60% or more for starters and the cartel covering, we're just watching these guys having fun at our expense.