Central banks gave their gold game away in April 2013 when they used the futures markets to knock the price down by more than $200 with relentless selling over several days. The selling had to be inspired by central banks because there was no important relevant news in the market to spook investors and because nobody else would have had access to the huge amounts of metal and capital involved.
All major central banks had to be participating or at least acquiescing in the smash, because any of them could have used it to buy metal at a discount. For many months before April 2013 the gold market was said to have official Chinese support underneath it. In April 2013 that support disappeared.
Today someone took the hammer to silver futures to an extent not seen in a long time, driving the price down by almost a dollar in less than an hour. The news potentially affecting the market was only the usual speculation about an increase in U.S. interest rates.
Of course the invaluable Zero Hedge quickly took note of the smash and the "massive volume" of sudden selling:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-02/silv...assive-volum...
GATA Chairman Bill Murphy's "Midas" commentary at LeMetropoleCafe.com reviewed the smash in detail, as with commodity broker J.B. Slear's minute-by-minute tracking of the smash as contracts were dumped on the market in great bulk "starting at 11:25 a.m. for 40 minutes straight." Slear counted it this way:
1,071 contracts at 11:25.
5,648 at 11:30.
2,798 at 11:35.
1,175 at 11:40.
2,815 at 11:45.
3,319 at 11:50.
1,517 at 11:55.
2,357 at 12:00.
5,861 at 12:05.
4,702 at 12:10.
"That's a total of 30,192 contracts in 40 minutes."
Toronto gold and silver market analyst Harvey Organ estimated that these contracts represented more than $2 billion in notional value even as that amount of metal is not available anywhere in the world.
Even the most obtuse apologists for the monetary metals markets will have to admit that this kind of selling was not designed to get a good price for the seller but to undertake a bear raid and protect or profit from a short position being managed by the biggest player or players in the market.
The only players that big are central banks or investment banks fronting for them.
But as of this hour the silver smash seems to have gone unnoticed by mainstream financial news organizations. Even most internet sites devoted to the monetary metals appear to be silent about it. And if the smash itself is to be overlooked, no one will be asking who perpetrated it and why -- not even the monetary metals mining industry itself, though documents filed in 2014 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission certify that governments and central banks are surreptitiously trading all major U.S. commodity and financial futures contracts:
http://www.gata.org/node/14385
http://www.gata.org/node/14411
The longstanding policy and mechanisms of Western governments and central banks in suppressing the monetary metals and thereby impairing all markets have been summarized and documented by GATA here:
http://www.gata.org/node/14839
Yes, governments and central banks have enormous power. But their power here is still limited here because it cannot succeed without deception. Markets cannot be rigged unless buyers and sellers can be fooled. So the greatest power of governments and central banks here is only the power conferred on them by the monetary metals industry's fecklessness and by the cowardice and corruption of mainstream financial news organizations.
Now that the rigging is as obvious in silver as it has been in gold, will anyone in the mining industry speak out? Will anyone in a mainstream financial news organization dare to pose a few specific, critical questions to governments and central banks and report their answers or refusals to answer?
Or must opposing this cosmic injustice still be left to the amateurs of GATA?
