Remember, only gold and silver markets are NOT rigged

Even though U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was quoted yesterday, as in the Bloomberg News story appended below, as saying that the U.S. government would use "'all the tools at our disposal' to protect the financial markets". ...

And even though the U.S. government and most Western central banks are now desperately and openly rigging the currency markets with their swap agreements and the stock markets with short sales regulations and government-brokered mergers. ...

And even though Western central banks have been openly selling, leasing, and swapping gold for years now, often at strategic moments. ...

Please remember that we have the solemn assurances of Kitco Senior Analyst Jon Nadler, Resource Investor's Tim Wood, CPM Group Managing Director Jeff Christian, market analyst Paul van Eeden, and a few other worthies that government is not -- repeat, NOT -- intervening in the gold and silver markets in ANY way. Gold and silver are merely incidental commodities -- NOT what they used to be, money, and not even potentially money -- and their prices are of no more interest to governments than the price of seaweed.

That is, when Secretary Paulson said he would protect the financial markets with "all the tools at our disposal," he meant "ALMOST all tools at our disposal," and would have said so if only Nadler, Wood, Christian, or van Eeden had been present to remind him.

And exactly what does Secretary Paulson mean to protect the financial markets against?

Why, THEMSELVES, of course -- the threat that an actual market price, rather than a government-approved price, might develop somewhere in the fantastic, overarching illusion that crony capitalism and central banking have made of what used to be markets. These days, if you want a market, you're stuck with Ebay -- at least until that too is nationalized.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=av7npHxu6eN8&refer=us