More fractures

With the current environment and talk of "cashless" transactions for goods and services, it comes as little surprise that people would turn to traditional stores of wealth, such as precious metals.

The real harbinger of doom, however, is that BlackRock is suspending issuance of their exchange traded fund, which is nothing more than paper-backed (electronic shares, actually) gold, and not the real thing. Why would the world's largest asset manager be so...worried about issuing more certificates? Because they know the marker being called (selling) will bankrupt them if the price for gold continues to rise via demand.

Not the first, not the biggest, nor is this the last of the cracks in the edifice of Big Banks Backed by Big Government, but just another one.