From Ed Steer:

Gold experienced its usual sell-off once Globex trading began in New York on Thursday evening. From that point on, nothing happened at all in Far East trading on Friday. But the moment that London open for business, gold looked like it was headed north with a vengence. However, at precisely 9:00 a.m. in London, a not-for-profit seller showed up...and that was it for the day. Between that time, and the Comex open at 8:00 a.m., gold fell about $15, and basically flat-lined for the rest of New York trading.

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Silver did virtually nothing through trading in the Far East, Europe and North America. There was a bit of a spike at the very end of Comex floor trading in New York...but that was the excitement for the day.

Thursday's open interest numbers, after gold and silver's second big up-day in a row, were as follows. Gold o.i. rose a largish 8,502 contracts...and silver o.i. only rose 84 contracts. Silver is the standout over the last couple of days. The silver price has risen over $1.60 on Wednesday and Thursday combined, yet the open interest has shown a net decline over those two days...plus silver o.i. was also down on Tuesday as well.

The new Commitment of Traders report on Friday didn't show much change. The main reason for that is because there were three days of rising prices last week...combined with two days of falling prices this week...so the result was sort of a wash. All the real damage was done on Wednesday of this past week. The complete info on that day won't be out until next Friday. Ted and I both agree that what happened on Wednesday during Comex floor trading in New York was planned in advance. The PPT knew what Bernanke was going to say at 2:15 that afternoon, and JPMorgan et al were given their marching orders, and that's why the prices blew through the 50-day moving averages to the downside with such severity, both in gold and silver, less than seven hours before the Fed's 'surprise' announcement. They took gold down about $10-12 more than I thought they would...or had to. Ted was happy that they did, because they took the gold price not only well below the 50-day moving average, but they also hit a new low for this move...below the lows of March 10/11. This really blew out a lot of longs in both the Non-Commercial and small trader categories...which was the object of the exercise.

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But, as Ted Butler keeps impressing on me...and is trying to impress on everyone else...is that gold is a side show compared to what's really important to the bullion banks, and that is silver. It is the center of the universe for them, because large quantities are becoming increasingly difficult to find...and '4 or less' bullion banks are short 71% of the entire Comex silver market!!! The number they did on silver during Comex trading on Wednesday was off the charts. JPMorgan et al [by pulling their bids] managed to drop the price below $12 for a few minutes. Thousands of long positions on margin in the Non-Commerical and Nonreportable categories got sold instantly. Silver was gang raped, pure and simple. And the CFTC, SEC and our silver companies do nothing.

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I'd pay a lot of money to know what the COT looked like in both gold and silver at the close of Comex floor trading on Wednesday.

In other gold news, there were 240 gold contracts delivered on Friday. The biggest issuer was Goldman Sachs [154 contracts] and the biggest stopper was the Bank of Nova Scotia [200 contracts]. In silver there were 397 contracts delivered...of which 392 were delivered by Goldman Sachs. There were lots of stoppers, but the biggest two were JPMorgan [230] and Triland USA [98]. Comex-approved silver warehouses increased their silver inventory by 329,117 ounces on Friday. There were no eagle changes from the U.S. Mint...and the GLD added a hefty 11 tonnes, or 363,000 ounces...SLV was up almost 6 million ounces.

Gene Arensberg was kind enough to provide the following info...and the up-to-date chart of the GLD...which is below. For the week, GLD was up 57.78 tonnes...for the month of March so far, 85.31 tonnes...and for the year-to-date, 334.37 tonnes. The new record-high total is...wait for it....1,114.60 tonnes. [Note to Barclays: How much of this is real metal and how much of this is paper gold? Just asking. - Ed] I'll have the SLV graph on Tuesday.

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It's no secret that it's bad out there. The chart below helps provide some perspective as to the magnitude of the current economic decline. S&P 500 earnings have fallen over 80% during the past 18 months, making this by far the largest decline on record. It was the latest quarter [Q4/08...the first full quarter following the financial meltdown], where the real damage was done. During that quarter, the S&P 500 came in with its first negative earnings quarter ever...and the amount lost during that quarter was more than the index has ever earned during a single quarter.

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Four stories for this Saturday...all of which are 'must reads'. The first is from John Embry, chief investment strategist at Sprott Asset Management in Toronto. In his latest commentary for Investor's Digest of Canada, Embry wonders: Since mine production is declining, where is the ETF gold coming from? And since the custodians of the ETFs for both gold and silver are also the perpetrators of the gold price suppression scheme, is the ETF gold really there at all? Better to hold real metal in one's hot little hands than paper promises of metal, Embry writes, and that's where the headline on his essay comes from. It's "Own Gold, the Metal, Not a Paper Promise," and the link is here.

More and more people are starting to realize that taking possession is the only way to go. The growing desire to hold precious metals in their physical form may be another side effect of investor distrust in the crisis-riddled global banking sector. I have been going on about this for a long time myself, and so have many others...including my good friend John Embry in the previous story. Here's a story in Canada's Globe and Mail that reports the same thing. The headline reads..."Bank Crisis Spawns New Kind of Gold Rush" and the link is here.

Did you ever wonder what ONE TRILLION dollars looks like? Besides being a lot of money, here is the physical manifestation of how much it really is. How many trains [with how many boxcars] would it take to move it from one place to another? I thank Dwight Owen for this story, and the link is here.

And lastly, from Canada's other national newspaper...the National Post...comes this rather poignant story. It's a question that I've asked myself many times...and it seems appropriate that this piece surfaces at this point in history. The author is Terence Corcoran and the piece bears the headline "Is this the end of America?" If you've read the book The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffen...then you'll know that the end isn't too far off. I thank P.S. for sending me this story...and the link is here.

Confidence grows at the rate a coconut tree grows. It falls at the rate a coconut falls. - Montek Ahluwalia

I was going to have a 'blast from the past' today...until this video showed up in my in-box in the wee hours of Saturday morning. We have all heard the expression 'child prodigy' before. Well...this little 6-year old girl is one! I have enough experience with them to know one when I see/hear one. Not only is she gifted...but she's a little 'drama queen' to boot. The youtube.com video clip says she speaks and reads eleven languages. I pity her parents. How do you raise/discipline a child like this. The world hasn't heard the last from her. Here she is...doing what she was born to do. I [once again] thank Dwight Owen for the link. Turn up your speakers and then click here.

This past week was historic in every sense of the word. The four stories I posted today went further than I could have ever hoped in convincing you to buy and take possession of as much physical gold and silver as you can. For all my wonderful American readers, I urge you to get some/most of your money out of the country while there's still time. You should also ensure that your passport is current. It's going to get ugly...and there's no turning back now.

I'll see you bright and early on Tuesday morning

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