Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Bear Raid Breaks Momentum

The paper money munchkins and metal bears are making their stand for gold at $1650 and silver at 32. That seems fairly obvious. They will hold it until they cannot, and then will fall back to defend a slightly higher price level. I like to think of it in American football terms. The bulls are going for a first down, and the bears are trying to hold them back.

Silver came in this morning with some serious momentum, and so we saw a fairly quick and sharp bear raid. See the first chart. Yes, the bear raid 'failed' but it broke the upward momentum which was the point.

Silver registed for delivery at the Comex is down to historically low levels again. They will have to be replenished before the next big delivery month.

Some of the commentators are remarking on the unusually low open interest in gold at Comex. While that could be a bullish or bearish indicator depending on how you wish to twist it, it could also very well indicate that the players are shunning the US futures market and so volume is down. Before these scandals work themselves out I expect it to fall much lower.

India cut its interest rate by 50 basis point, and this was most likely the fundamental reason for the rally in commodities and stocks.

It looks like the metals and stocks are moving together again, so one might put the long metal short stocks hedge back on again.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Risorgimento della Gola

The IMF raised it's world growth projections from 3 to 3.5%. Since the only group that is worse than the IMF projecting growth rates is the Fed, I think we can write than one off to jawboning at best, but nothing of lasting substance.

The rally was in part a wash and rinse, a way to catch the bears off balance, and was triggered largely by India which cut interest rates by 50 basis points.

After the bell Intel beat estimates, for the 17th time in a row. IBM beat as well. Their accounting reports are as reliable and substantial as a politician's campaign promise, so the markets may not be overwhelmed by them.

And before you ask, that is not literal Italian in the title, but a rather loose double edged pun.

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

The premium in PSLV for silver remains historically low.

I thought the bear raid this morning was all about breaking the upward momentum in silver in order to keep gold under wraps at 1650.

More on that later in the gold and silver commentary.

The Quebec Students Strike

"But the most interesting resistance happening right now is going on in Quebec, Canada. There are, according to one representative report, over 165,000 students on strike from class out of a 495,000 student body.

Quebec is looking to increase their tuition 75% over the next several years; students responded by starting what is now the longest strike in the province's history. It's gone on even though the government has offered to make student loans a nicer, kinder form of debt, with income-contingent repayments while not budging on the tuition hikes...

The campus combines several issues into one - the privatization of public services, the dismembering of social insurance and its replacement with a regime of debt and risk-shifting, the dismantling of the primary means of social mobility with one designed to entrench inequality, which all builds towards a lack of freedom to fully develop ones talents and abilities and be full, productive citizens.

These students are right to fight this battle at the beginning, during the initials cuts. Privatization creates its own justification; the more public universities are defunded and reconceived as a private good, the less civic interest there is in defending them as a public good. And they are also fighting at the beginning of their lives, both for what kind of world they want to live in while resisting the constraints of indenture that we see when this process of privatization and debt reaches its ultimate conclusion - a path the United States is much further along."

The Quebec Students Strike - Rorty

At this time strikes and protests are more oddities, although the numbers are growing.

In time they will become a trend and will be met by even harsher repression, Mideast-style, in the US, the UK and Canada.

It sometimes seems as though the leaders of the great world powers have decided not to fight among themselves, except in controlled regional conflicts. Blood keeps the ledgers green.

Rather, they have learned to cooperate with each other, to enrich themselves and increase their personal power which has always been the goal of the predator class, by dominating and abusing their own people, engaging in financial pogroms, and preparing the way for a de facto global government and planned economy of the elite, by the elite, and for the elite.

And so we see once again the dreams of world domination, the rhetoric of privilege over law, and the perennial rise of the ubermensch. Even the victims of yesteryear seem to be getting on board, or at least their leaders are for it, hoping to get their own piece of the pie.

How soon we forget, forsaking what is lasting and important, becoming wilfully blind out of pride, fear and greed. There are those who would have a world in flames, as long as they might own the ashes, winning. And so history repeats.