I sure can't disagree, 'Don'tcry'… and am left blank. I know I have had many differences of opinion here over the years as I passionately supported ECU, and JPMs in general. Some became angered with my 'subjectiveness'. In retrospect I was 'guilty' of being a 'fan' of so many experts who I thought were so experienced, so intelligent and so perspicacious. If I learned from them, how could I be wrong? Perhaps I have stepped on some toes in my errant zeal for 'the truth'. Perhaps I have been too tenacious in clinging to my now, somewhat shaky perch. Perhaps I am sobered by the fact that I may have misled not only myself, but so many others. Today, I am left with only questions I’m afraid.

Eric Sprott via Zerohedge today:

“Luckily for the Fed and the U.S. government, there is so much slack in the labour market that inflation might be years away. And, if we are right about the long run unemployment rate being structurally higher, then the Fed has all the room it needs to continue Quantitative Easing (QE) to infinity. This might allow them to continue to hide the true financial position of the government for many years to come.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-26/eric-sprott-ignoring-obvious#comments

The above causes me to pause and consider (along with the opaque, controlled, incremental central bank purchases of gold) that the surreptitious suppression of gold has many years to go… and that we may not see any parabolic moves for years to come. This does not rhyme with all the technical charts or the ‘second leg’ rise in gold that many expect. The ‘cup and handle’ chart touted for years has a very long and distorted ‘handle’ now. Can the continued market interventions paint the charts? Unless silver can somehow break the back of the cartel, by way of sheer demand, which so many think will/can happen, are we all kidding ourselves about the prospects for mining shares?

So many expert spokespeople for the PMs have been ambushed for years with respect to their intelligent and sensible forecasts that one has to wonder if the forces controlling the sector are just so powerful that any near term, impactful rise in prices may be wishful thinking. Eric Sprott’s above thoughts seem to conflict with everything he has been saying for years… even though he and so many others are super bullish on especially silver. What exactly is Eric Sprott trying to tell us?

Then yesterday, Jim Sinclair:

“This period, today, is an attempt to drive you out of your wits, which is in my opinion the last and largest attack you will see perpetrated on us before gold closes over $3,500. This period of pain will not be measured in months, but counted in history as days."

“Counted in history”: is he not saying in effect, when we look back, the months will see like days. How many months … 3, 6, 8, and 20?

Do you not think that those controlling things, or wish to appear to be controlling things, could be planning a further, attempted, devastating attack on the JPMs and the PMs? If you were secretly guaranteed incredible, short term paper profits for ‘playing the game’, month after month, would you take the cumulative huge paper profits or the much smaller profits dealing directly in the bullions?

All the patterns are there. How long will they be ‘fashionable’?

When some of the world’s best precious metals experts shout ‘gold’, ‘silver’ from the rooftops year after year, they’re talking in years, not months … and they have been right. Unfortunately the poor slobs who bought into the stocks for the most part, do/did have not have $millions to play with in their pockets and all the time in the world to hold those stocks as the descended to as low as 2% of their value… all the while the big money investors were raking it in investing in the physical.

That is all well and good… BUT, where it all went off the rails for the little guy was that even the above, well intended ‘experts’ have been woefully mistaken in just what the long term destruction would be in the JPMs due to the incessant fraud over years. The wealthy bullion investors have been able to well afford sitting on millions of shares of destroyed but quality juniors (and seniors). Now, is even better for them because they can buy in so cheap, either by way of private placements or other financing.

What lies ahead?