From Ed Steer:

Gold didn't do much in Far East and European trading yesterday. The real action came the moment that the London p.m. fix was in at 10:00 a.m. New York time. The dealers pulled their bids and 'presto'...gold was down $25. Silver followed a slightly different path. Just before the London p.m. gold fix, silver had a big spike to the upside before it too succumbed to the same not-for-profit seller(s)...an 81 cent move from the top to the bottom. As was (correctly) pointed out by UBS gold analyst John Reade...yesterday was options expiry on the Comex and the boys were doing everything that they usually do around this time of month to make sure a lot of those call options they'd written since August's option expiry finished out of the money...and the bullion bank(s) gets to keep all those lovely premiums. Mission accomplished!

Yesterday morning I got an e-mail from Bart Chilton, one of the nicer commissioners over at the CFTC...informing me that the enforcement division (rather than the oversight division) of the CFTC was going to be investigating the silver market. My e-mail back to him was right to the point..."Bart, the first place your boys can look is the price moves around the London p.m. fix today. Whoever was behind those shenanigans should be able to tell you a lot."

Open interest numbers for Wednesday were relatively unexciting. Gold o.i. went up 850 contracts...but silver dropped another 560 contracts. Thursday's changes in open interest should be interesting when they're reported later this morning. I'll let you know on Saturday.

Not a lot of interesting things to report in the precious metals market yesterday...except for the fact that the US Mint announced that they were "temporarily" not taking orders for the one ounce 24K Buffalo because of "unprecedented demand". Below is a current graph of SLV...the silver ETF. A lot of somebodys have been buying silver with both hands all year long...regardless of the price action. I thank Gene Arensberg for providing this.

click to enlarge

In other news...where do I start! Bloomberg..."Asia fears panic selling of US debt, Chinese adviser says." Bloomberg..."FDIC may need $150 billion bailout as More Banks Fail". (Only $150 billion? That amount will just turn out to be a down payment on what they're really going to need. - Ed) IHT..."Money-market rates soar world-wide". DJ Market Talk: Funds futures see 100% rate cut odds this year." Reuters..."U.S. will lose financial superpower status: Germany". (Gee, the president of Iran said exactly the same thing at the United Nations on Monday! - Ed) Reuters..."Bank borrowing from the Fed has now reached $188 billion/day." NY Times..."Government seizes WaMu and sells Some Assets to JPMorgan". ( I guess the Fed couldn't wait until Friday night to do "the dirty" on this one - Ed)

The first story comes from US Representative Ron Paul of Texas. Ron wades into the $700 billion boondoggle. It's posted over at lewrockwell.com and is entitled "The Creation of the Second Great Depression". The link is here.

In a previous paragraph I mentioned an article about Germany saying that "U.S. financial dominance was over." Well, here's the Reuters story in full. The link is here.

And lastly, an editorial by Chris Powell over at the Journal Enquirer in Manchester, Connecticut. It's entitled "Bailout can't hide it, the country is busted" and the link is here.

So here we sit...waiting for the men to come down from the mountain with the engraved stone tablets...at least that's the way one of my more religious readers put it yesterday. This illustration from the "Department of Manna" sums it up nicely.

Today is Friday. It could get really ugly and we'll find out soon enough if the prudent are going to get sacrificed on the altar of the wanton one more time. All of us at Casey's Daily Resource Plus will be here Saturday morning to examine the entrails...and we'll see you then.

Casey Research correspondent-at-large Ed Steer is a keen observer of the financial scene and a board member of GATA.org.