Silver stuck its nose above $18 for a moment, but obviously someone noticed, as the spike didn’t last long. Volumes were extremely light again yesterday.

Considering the lack of volume, Monday’s open interest numbers were a little larger than either I (or Ted Butler) expected. Gold o.i. was up 4,143 contracts and silver was up 1,193. There were probably a lot of spread trades buried in those numbers.

If you remember a couple of stories on the huge price increases in rice and other cereal grains that I’d posted in my remarks over the last couple of days, I said that things would get much worse before they got any better. Well, we’ve had our first casualty. According to an Ambrose Evans-Pritchard piece in London’s Financial Times, Haiti’s government fell over the weekend following rice and bean riots. Five died. It has begun.

I have a couple of stories today. Since it’s Wednesday, I have silver analyst Ted Butler’s regular contribution. In Saturday’s commentary, you may remember me waxing philosophic about the huge concentrated short positions in both gold and silver in the Commercial category of the COT. I said the following…”The ‘8 or less’ traders (bullion banks) completely control the prices in the both the gold and silver markets…that’s all there is to it.” Ted’s latest deals with exactly this issue. The essay is entitled “Super Concentration” and is linked here.

The other story is about oil…Russian oil. The VP of Russia’s Lukoil pretty much says that “the top is in” for Russia’s oil output. There aren’t too many shades of grey in this story which is from the Financial Times in London…and is entitled “Fears Emerge Over Russia’s Oil Output.” It’s linked here.

Once again, yesterday’s news was wall-to-wall bad. PPI up 1.1%. Home foreclosures jump 57%. Oil above $113, gasoline at a record… and auction-rate bond market “will cease to exist” says Citigroup. That must have meant that the Dow and the US$ were both up yesterday. They were.

Take the blue pill this morning…and I’ll meet you and Alice down the proverbial rabbit hole tomorrow morning…same time, same place.

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