Golden Minerals Company

From Ed Steer:

Gold managed to add about three bucks to its price from the beginning of Wednesday morning trading in the Far East...right up until 1:00 p.m. in the London afternoon...which was 8:00 a.m. in New York. At that point, gold tacked on $8 in less than 30 minutes...sat there until lunchtime...then tacked on another $8 in less than 15 minutes. Then one of the usual not-for-profit sellers showed up and that was it for the day. Gold did manage to poke its nose above $940 again...and finally closed above the $940 mark at $940.30. Does this price have any significance? Who knows, but I can easily tell that 'da boyz' have been defending this price with great enthusiasm since June 15th...as the daily market action has been so obvious lately...confirmed by the graph below.

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Silver didn't show up for this party, but still managed to add 15 cents to its price by the close of electronic trading in New York at 5:15 p.m. yesterday afternoon. The precious metals shares did surprisingly well, but did give back some of their gains as the day wore on.

Of course the dollar fell a bunch yesterday...and it was encouraging to see gold gain back everything it had lost from the prior day. But it didn't tack on those gains in lock-step with the dollar decline...but put all its gains into two big moves...one at exactly 8:00 a.m. and the other at exactly 12:00 noon Eastern time. With everything seeming to happen precisely on the hour in New York...what are the chances that these are random events? Just asking.

As I mentioned yesterday, I expected Tuesday's open interest to decline significantly after the huge declines in the gold and silver prices that we had on that day. Well, that's not what the report showed when I checked yesterday. Gold o.i. actually rose another 632 contracts while silver o.i. rose 95 contracts. Volume in gold was 109,797 contracts, while silver volume was only 27,320...the lowest it’s been in a while. Despite what the report showed, there was liquidation, as tech funds pitched longs and/or went short...while the bullion banks went almost exclusively long against them...and did not cover shorts. That's why the open interest numbers showed an increase in the face of obvious liquidation. Since this happened on Tuesday [which is the cut-off for this week's COT], this data should be in the next report...which won't be published until Monday because of the U.S. holiday tomorrow. But will it...as the bullion banks are known to hold back information until it suits them to publish it.

Ted Butler and I were both surprised how few contracts were delivered on first day notice on Tuesday. Well, they made up for it on Wednesday...especially in silver, as July is a big silver delivery month. There were 1,885 silver contracts delivered...that's a bit over half of the 3,642 silver contracts that are shown to be standing for delivery at the moment. There were 42 gold contracts delivered yesterday as well. There were no changes in either GLD or SLV. Over at the U.S. Mint...5,000 one ounce gold eagles and 50,000 silver eagles were reported produced in their July 1st update. The Comex-approved warehouses showed that their silver inventories only increased by a very small 8,829 ounces. Their total silver inventory at the end of June stood at 117,583,739 ounces.

In other gold news, I note that India was a buyer in the gold market yesterday. The usual N.Y. commentator had one other thing to mention as well..."In times gone by, the Istanbul Gold Exchange would promptly publish Turkey's gold import data on the first of the month. Now they are tardier. But a report has appeared saying the country imported at least 4.1 tonnes in June. While this is modest compared to the 15-20 tonnes/month Turkey has usually imported in recent years, it is the strongest import in 8 months and suggests this traditionally stalwart buyer is getting back into line."

I do have a couple of gold-related stories for you today. The first is a Liberty Dollar prosecution update. Bernard von NotHaus, founder of the Liberty Dollar, has provided an update on the legal situation of himself and the other Liberty Dollar people being prosecuted by the federal government on counterfeiting charges. Von NotHaus reports that a long slog through the courts is ahead and that he and his people will be grateful for any assistance. You can read the von NotHaus' update toward the bottom of the Liberty Dollar dispatch linked here.

And the second story...Mike Zielinski, proprietor of the Mint News Blog, reports that U.S. Senator Mike Crapo [R-Idaho] has introduced legislation to provide precious metal investors the same favorable capital gains tax treatment afforded to stock and mutual fund investors. The legislation is entitled "Fair Treatment for Precious Metals Investors Act" and the link is here.

Two other stories today. The first is from The Times in London. It's a story that discusses which central bank is debasing their currency the fastest...the Euro by the ECB, or the US$ by the Fed. The story is entitled "How the ECB's fig leaf has completely withered away". It's a longish piece, but definitely worth the read, and I thank Craig McCarty for sending it along. The link is here.

And, with another tip of the hat to Craig McCarty, comes this Bloomberg piece entitled "CFTC Looking at All Options for Fair Markets, Gensler Says"..."The CFTC will use all of its regulatory power to ensure fair operations of futures markets for oil, agriculture, currencies and interest rates, the agency’s chairman said." I didn't see him mention either gold or silver. Maybe they're only concerned about manipulation on the long side of the market. The bullion banks' obscene short-side corner in the silver and gold markets may be of no concern to them. The link is here.

The world's most powerful investment bank [Goldman Sachs] is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. - Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone magazine, June 2009

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We are now celebrating the first anniversary of the beginning of the big commodities crash of 2008. It came out of nowhere and crushed every commodity on the planet. Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at a Canadian bank, BMO Financial Group, blamed it on a secret plan cooked up by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The link to the interview on this subject is here. Listening to the first eight minutes will suffice. Will it happen again? Don't know...but nothing would surprise me...as there are no markets anymore, only interventions.

All of us at Casey's Daily Resource Plus hope that all of our American readers have a great Fourth of July holiday weekend, and we'll see you right here tomorrow morning.

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