Even with all the bullish talk re gold and silver recently, the gold and silver shorts continue to pile on more shorts. I get the impression from Ed Steer's comments the past several days that the '4 or less' bullion banks seem to have picked up the pace in shorting again. I thought they had backed off the shorting for awhile, but they seem to be at it again and getting aggressive at it. Now, why is that?

I think the shorting pace has picked up speed ever since the new treasury 'team' was finally put in place, and we know the history of these guys. Could it be that the bullion banks now have the green light again to get back to keeping a lid on things? If so, I wouldn't be surprised to see the game of capping the PM's for fun and profit continue on for some time.

And as far as I'm concerned, nothing good can come from JPMorgan, the biggest silver short on the COMEX according to Mr. Steer, being a custodian of the over 7,000 tonnes of silver in the silver ETF, SLV. That's almost laughable. Looks like a pretty big cookie jar sitting in JPMorgan's lap should the need arise for more silver.