Looks like some selling and covering are going on by those numbers posted by gwr. Don't know how one really knows who's doing what. But that quote from Ted Butler noted in today's Ed Steer column is downright ominous.

"Never has the net speculative long and [the] dealer short position been larger. And this was as of the Tuesday cut-off; surely it is much larger through Friday. [31 million ounces. - Ed] It would appear the Razor's Edge has been sharpened, meaning a quiet price resolution is hard to imagine from the current set-up. The only question is which side blinks first."

With the banks short over 31 million ounces, you have to wonder just how deep their pockets (Uncle Sam's?) are and how they're going to weasel out of it, if they cannot stop the bulls. I just cannot imagine those big banks being forced into buying anywhere close to 31 million ounces of anything to cover, let alone gold.

And I'm flabbergasted at reading on a couple of news sites the so-called growing concern over the huge and disturbing long positions in gold while not a peep about the staggering short positions of just a couple of banks. Unbelievable. Perhaps sowing the seeds for a future Fed/Treasury clamp-down on those long positions. Could happen.