posted on Mar 03, 11 01:42AM Use the IP Check tool [?]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/a-conspiracy-with-a-silver-lining/?hp

Try as I might, I just can't understand the silver bug's complaint.

from the article:

"Nonetheless, how to explain the price of silver? In the past six months, the value of the precious metal has increased nearly 80 percent, to more than $34 an ounce from around $19 an ounce. In the last month alone, its price has increased nearly 23 percent."

If this is price suppression, let's hope they don't go after oil or we'll be paying $250/bbl before the year is out.

Or are silver bugs saying the price should be higher? If so, what's a fair price once you remove the shenanigans? $50? $100? $200?

So, do silver bugs really want to pay more for silver? I thought the idea was to quietly accumulate at the lowest possible price, then stash it away as insurance against impending doom? If that's true, then these guys are handing you a gift. And for this you whine?

OTOH, if you're buying with the object of selling at some future point, then you haven't done that bad. I can just hear the guffaws at the CFTC when they read your complaint about market manipulation: I'm only up 80% dammit! I should have at least a 4 bagger if JPM would only step aside.

What I see here is a kind of schizophrenia. We want silver as protection against immanent doom, but we want to it rise in dollar terms so ....uh.... so what? So we can pay a higher price? So we can say we made some sort of profit, as measured in...? So we can sit back and say "I told you so" to the naysayers? Bit of a contradiction there, I'd say.

Let me come at this from a different angle. If you're expecting a dollar collapse and return to silver as money, then wouldn't it be better if more silver were in more hands? If this is the poor man's gold, how does a higher price help the poor man? Or do you want to be the only guy in post apocalypse Montana who can buy stuff? You sure won't be selling anything if no one has any silver.

Now, if none of the above is true, but you're still in the market, that means you're either a producer, a consumer or a speculator.

I can't see consumers whining about manipulation - that gets them their stock at a lower price. A producer might object to this though. So, where are they? Where's the industry lobby to rid the market of this sinister force? I don't see it. These guys seem perfectly happy with the current price.

That leaves speculators, but do we even care about them? They don't care about us. If they can't make money in silver, they'll just move to corn, or oil, or gummy bears - whatever's moving.

Notice, I've neither denied nor affirmed market manipulation. The simple fact is, I don't care. It's a side issue to the greater harm being done by Central Banks through their suppression of interest rates and monetization of debt. We're talking TRILLIONS here. So, how large is the silver market by comparison? Not big enough to make any difference, I'd say. It's like bitching over the price of violin strings while Rome burns to the ground.

Frankly, I think the silver (and gold) bugs are spinning their wheels. They're focused on the symptoms when they should be addressing the disease. Again, you either believe the whole thing blows up, in which case you're buying insurance at a cheap price, or you don't, in which case what are you complaining about? Move to a different market if you don't like the action in silver. It's not like there's any lack of choices out there.

ebear