I tend to differ of opinion on our capacity ( I mean agoracom members ) to be able to manipulate the market , though i definetly don't see what's going on from any vintage point in fact all this is a very part time occupation for me so maybe i'm wrong .

But i don't make decisions to buy or sell based on comments made here , to me that's just part of the process , yet if co's send false information ( as in facts )that are then transmitted here well it could in actualy have an influence on my decision as part of th info i gather.

As for the COMEX that's a much bigger game of course with very big players that can be define by some of the adjectives u use i have no doubt . It's also been more and more obvious lately that some ugly games are being played , but as i said here before there's no such thing as a free or open market everybody from the corner store to the private hedge funds are trying to control every aspect of the market there in, as much as they can, and cheating is a most common affair.

I don't mean to justify that type of cheap and coward behavior but one must be aware of it it's all around us by nature . Money coming from illegal " businesses " has been flooding the markets with a major impact since the 70's , here in Canada 1998 was a vintage year for laundering money in the order of $100 billion now at the time that was roughly 20% of GDP . That kind of money does'nt hide under a mattress , there's been countless story of in the papers concerning the links between that money and the markets.

So one must be aware that his among that kind of crowd and all is not rosy in this mad mad world .

And anyone thinking it can be stopped is coming from another planet, and is just as dangerous by being naive or rightuous .