Net Asset Value Premiums For Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Sprott Buys More Silver

It appears that Sprott has drawn down the cash levels in the Silver trust to add additional bullion to the funds holdings.

The Silver Trust spent approximately $23,000,000 of their cash to buy 680,104 ounces of silver bullion or about 33.82 per ounce.

The Trust typically does not operate with cash levels much lower than this. They need to pay all the expenses of the fund's administration including record keeping and storage fees.

I suspect that they may act to raise cash levels, probably by doing another follow on offering within the next three to four months. They will probably wait for the premium to expand a bit first, depending on how they view the physical market for bullion shaping up.

Chris Hedges: The Reaping of America

"We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats. The choice before us is how it will be administered.

Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history’s most savage assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention the Earth’s ecosystem. And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner, has any intention or ability to stop it.

If you insist on participating in the cash-drenched charade of a two-party democratic election at least be clear about what you are doing. You are, by playing your assigned role as the Democratic or Republican voter in this political theater, giving legitimacy to a corporate agenda that means your own impoverishment and disempowerment.

All the things that stand between us and utter destitution—Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head Start, Social Security, public education, federal grants-in-aid to America’s states and cities, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered meals for seniors—are about to be shredded by the corporate state.

Our corporate oligarchs are harvesting the nation, grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent...

Obama is not in charge. Romney would not be in charge. Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are corporate employees. Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and their idiosyncrasies are meaningless. And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion. The corporate state does not produce a product that is different. It produces brands that are different. And brands cost a lot of money to sell.

You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil disobedience. You can pride yourself on being practical. You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils. But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the real sucker is. "

Chris Hedges, How Do You Take Your Poison?

Read the rest here.

Quo vadimus, Domine?

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - End of Quarter - When Dollar and the Pound Are But Dust

This week is the end of the third quarter.

Those holding the big short in the metals might strive to keep the price down to make their 'mark to market' look less daunting.

Stocks may find a bit of a floor 'unless something happens.'

The fundamentals for gold look formidable. The long lull of summer may be coming to an end.

When the dollar and the pound, and the empires they helped to found, are but dust and faded memories of days gone by, gold and silver will remain.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
I am great Ozymandias, saith the stone,
The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand. — The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race,
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Horace Smith, Ozymandias, 1818

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - End of Quarter Boogie Woogie?

The world will always welcome lovers, as time goes by.