A good response below from Max's site on the CME's latest margin requirement increase that takes effect today. Probably for the first time ever, this traditional suppression tactic has resulted in a positive impact on prices.

Silver moving - VHF

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Andrew C. Hoffman

Each day, I am more and more amazed by not only the fraud and corruption in financial markets (and everything else, for that matter), but the apathy about such as America rapidly spins around the bottom of the toilet bowl.

As a veteran (tick-for-tick) watcher of the Precious Metals manipulation- I mean market- for the past decade, I have watched every dirty trick imaginable, legal and illegal, utilized to attack these cornerstones of the global monetary system. The end, of course, being for Washington/Wall Street and their analogues overseas to retain power while stealing from the masses.

One of their favorite tools has been to raise margin requirements at the CRIMEX- sorry COMEX- every time gold and silver start to break out. This petty slight of hand, always pulled after markets were closed, was combined with a healthy dose of naked paper contract shorting to create a paper selloff and drive the prices down. And it always worked.

In fact, in early November they had the gall to pull such a raid MIDDAY, just as silver was passing $30.50/oz and getting ready to explode, creating a nearly $5.00/oz. intraday plummet. In the old days, such an event would trigger a 1-2 month liquidation, and more Cartel victories. However, that drop was quickly recouped, with silver hitting new highs in December. Since that time, two other margin increases were attempted by the CRIMEX overlords on gold/silver, but this time they were done when gold/silver were FALLING instead of RISING as in the past; such was their desperation to create a big sell-off.

Those attempts miserably failed, including the January engineered sell-off in silver/gold that has already been recouped in silver (new 30-year high yesterday) and nearly so in gold. But each time these margin increases occurred, they were heavily reported across the globe, by good guys such as GATA and bad guys such as Kitco whom are desperate for PM’s to fall.

But what really shocked me was that ANOTHER INTRADAY 50% margin increase was instituted YESTERDAY for both gold and silver (and many other commodities), but not only did gold and silver not go down, they didn’t even flinch, with silver in particular soaring to 30-year record levels.

http://www.cmegroup.com/tools-information/lookups/advisories/clearing/files/Chadv11-66.pdf (see pages 14-18)

And not only that, I didn’t see one piece of reporting of it, even by GATA!

In other words, the Cartel’s ammunition tray is so bare that events like this, which even three months ago still could make waves, aren’t even worth the time of day. Another would be the level of the dollar/Euro forex rate, for years incorrectly interpreted as meaningful to PMs and finally recognized as IRRELEVANT.

The Gold Cartel is on its last legs, the victim of massive physical buying around the world that will not stop, EVER, or at least until the world returns to a REAL gold/silver standard!

Andrew C. Hoffman, CFA