Wow. So many angles one could view the current price situation from. "Another" hypothesized many years ago that the sign of the end times before the final melt-up in Precious Metals, would be a wholesale, landslide abandonment of the Crimex futures market as the price for physical in the open market soared in the opposite direction. You know it and I know it, there is no fundamental basis that accounts for such a spectacular crash in the price of Gold & Silver in recent weeks, given the persistent and worsening balance sheet positions in leading US Financials. So what's up? As GWR pointed out the other day some Central Bank Dumping an unusual large quantity of Gold at the end of July (30 tonnes) speaks volumes of background operations wholly designed to prop the Dollar at 72 cents when it was on the verge of utter collapse, which is it's destiny anyways no matter the delay from short term interventions. All the while huge reductions in PM Futures Open Interest reap unusual large profits for the perennial 4-8 major shorts who we know desperately need cash infusions to prop up their balance sheets (hint hint about the driving force/rationale behind this major decline.) Regardless of whichever force is most responsible for these wild gyrations (lack of faith in us financial markets or just the usual Cartel shenanigans), further reaction will provide hints of what's in store for the global banking system going forward. A continued slide in Gold & Silver mean something is about to hit the fan, whereas if the futures market prices suddenly recover and run back up into the 900's, then it's safe to say TPTB have managed to forestall the day of reckoning for a while longer & it's business as usual as the Cartel rapes futures holders again of profits based on inside information (all in the interest of national security of course.) At any rate I vote for the latter outcome for now (we're at or close to a PM bottom) as the Cartel operators in the background simply take full advantage of fears of typical seasonal weakness. But the Indians have already began to buy Gold in bulk on this pullback, so the forces of physical demand are already coming into play. Then the next logical step imo in order to maintain the status quo, involves the Cartel operatives covering shorts, and going long again while panic crests in the PM markets, then watch them engineer another spectacular PM rally and rake in yet another wad of profits on the long side in order to prop up their lagging balance sheets. Quite the ATM machine these insiders have going for them, eh?