we've been speaking of this eventuality in some form for some time, and now its here, growing and won't be fun for anyone;

The hijinks playing out in financial markets instruct us that politics finally comes back to the soundness of our economic arrangements, no matter how far out into the asteroid belt of psychopathic ideology the nation veers. For instance, we’re about to find out how little race-and-gender hustling actually matters to the common good of this land. After their successful prank with GameStop, the subreddit vigilantes are aiming to send the price of silver to the silvery moon now, and, in the process, drive hedge-fund privateers and bankster short-sellers into insolvency, even if it wrecks the financial system.

Do you doubt that the system, led by the clueless and feckless Federal Reserve, was already beating a path to financial suicide? Two decades of trying to paper over America’s broken business model with money-from-nowhere, and failure of the authorities to regulate the games being played around that, switched off the price-discovery mechanism of markets. Does that sound abstruse? I’ll explain. Price-discovery is the main function of markets: to send correct signals as to the true price of everything, soybeans, iron ore, stocks, what-have-you, and, most importantly, the exact price of money itself, borrowed over a period of time: that is, term interest rates, meaning the cost of debt.

The price of silver (and of gold, too) have been among the most manipulated, suppressed, and perverted for many years because the rising price against paper currencies would signal the falling value of money, which would inform the people that their standard-of-living is falling — and nothing stirs up political anger like that.  So, the regulatory authorities looked the other way when their cronies in big banks such as J.P. Morgan played games to suppress precious metal prices with a revolving short-selling scheme that regularly knocked down the price to discourage buyers from investing in precious metals......read more....