"My final hope for a quick resolution is based on the knowledge that the supply of gold available to dump is finite. CBs have already unloaded a large chunk of their holdings on the way up to keep the scam going. European banks are not selling much gold now at all. Worldwide production has dropped sharply, drawing even more physical gold inventory down. Investment demand worldwide is running at record levels. So I do not know if the crooks can keep up their act for another year, or 10 years. I just know that it cannot go on forever. IF China or other nations decide to buy up a chunk of gold for their reserves, they could take out every ounce the CBs have left and end it overnight."

Coach, I am responding to your message with three observations.

The first is, that you are right that the game has changed. Deliberate lack of regulation has changed relatively free markets in markets, where dark pools backed by political power can seemingly do anything they like. They can move entire market segments up and down 2-5% in a single day and make a load of profit in the process by triggering stopp-losses. They can crush a healthy sector for a lot of years, but not more than that. Time is running out for short-term games. Fundamentals will inevitably start ruling again.

The second is, that I as a European I probably have a different perspective of this crisis than you as an North-American. In Europe the stock- and commodity markets have less influence on consumer psychology, there are more savings to act as a cushion and we are probably more aware than north-americans that the momentum has shifted to Asia, where the scope for further growth is still enormous. China still has a long way to go in building up its infrastructure, while India only just began. The commodity sector is not dead and certainly the PM-market is very much alife in Asia.

My last observation is, that since 2000 we have entered a Kondratieff winter and even though the effect of this winter seemed to have been postponed for 6-7 years by Greenspan and Bernanke , we just faced what it means when you postpone the effects of such a winter with countercyclical measures: you get the same, but accumulated effect in a very short time-span. During a K-winter, the economy goes down, while precious metals thrive. So as much as the downward effect on the economy has been accumulating but suffocated during all those years, the upward effect of PM-markets has also been accumulating but suffocated all those years. We just felt what happens when you postpone a crisis to evolve naturally. So inevitably we will feel soon, what happens when you suffocate a PM-market rally to evolve naturally. It will come at once in a very dense mode.

Hope this makes you a bit more optimistic.