Thanks for that clip, VHF,

My wife is from Ohio and some of her friends back there are in really desperate shape. Absolutely awful. Most are college educated, but that doesn't matter. Living above their means with lots of goodies requiring both husband and wife to work, one loses their job and the down-spiral starts.

Sad to say that outside of the internet, which, IMO, most people don't use for information purposes, there has not been much in the US culture to prepare people for much of anything financial. School system ignores it, parents generally don't teach it, advertisers exploit the ignorance big-time, and sooner or later people get blindsided financially. Most people around here seem to be more concerned with the upcoming football games or the new story line of their favorite tv show than anything else. This new complication into their lives has many of them simply dazed and they're getting angrier by the day.

On another matter closer to home, the declining open interest in both gold and silver is a puzzle for me. It seems that the price of the metals has been going up as the open interest has been going down, indicating short covering in a big way. But that's not the way it should be working in this environment, IMO. I had thought that with prices escalating that the specs and momo players and hedge funds would pile into the futures knowing full well that the shorts were covering and ripe for bashing.

But that isn't happening. So I wonder what that means when the short covering stops. How much new buying will there be. How will it affect prices if volume trickles away. Does this indicate a fear or risk factor of some sort. There are so many PM ETFs now, here and abroad, that the money going into them is huge. Less risk, very liquid. Maybe that's where much of it is going and, of course, why there would be less for us.

Regarding this: From Ed Steer's comment re GWR's post of the other day.
"The gold open interest fell 5,735 contracts to 378,070. In all the 30 years I have been around the commodities markets, this open interest situation is a first. Normally open interest expands as a market rises. Gold rallied a stunning $150, while the gold OI dropped. Same analysis from me … it is your Gold Cartel sycophants running for the hills.

Silver is even more bizarre. The silver open interest continues to dwindle to incredibly low levels. It went down 2115 contracts to 104,420 … now close to a MULTI-year low. In general the bad guys know their game is over."