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April
10
2019

If Evidence Of Gold & Silver Manipulation Isn’t Enough For Charges, Maybe Govt Is The Perp?
Chris Powell

Perhaps the underlying manipulator of gold & silver hasn’t been JP Morgan, but perhaps it has been the US government itself? Here’s why…

by Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA)

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

In commentary posted SilverSeek, silver market analyst Ted Butler reports confirmation from former Commodity Futures Trading Commission member Bart Chilton that JPMorganChase assumed from the collapsing investment bank Bear Stearns a massive short position in silver and has been allowed to manipulate the silver market for years right to the present day.

Butler complains that he was misled years ago by Chilton’s responses to complaints of silver market manipulation, but Butler seems to be missing a way of construing the former commissioner’s key comment. That is, Chilton has said the CFTC’s long-running investigation of the silver market found evidence of manipulation but not enough to bring charges. That could mean that the underlying manipulator hasn’t been JPMorganChase at all but the U.S. government using JPMorganChase as a broker in the market.

After all, the CFTC repeatedly has refused to answer the question — first posed by GATA and then by U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, R-West Virginia —

http://gata.org/node/18684

http://gata.org/node/18832

— as to whether the commission has jurisdiction over market manipulation undertaken by the U.S. government, directly or through intermediaries, or whather such manipulation is authorized by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 as amended since then. It’s a simple yes-or-no question and the commission’s refusal to answer it even for a member of Congress is strong evidence that an honest answer would be embarrassing.

In an interview in 2012 with CNBC the head of JPMorganChase’s commodities desk, Blythe Masters, gave support to such an understanding. She said the bank had no position of its own in the monetary metals but was trading them only for clients. Unfortunately Masters was not asked whether those clients included governments and central banks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc9Me4qFZYo

But such surreptitious trading in the monetary metals futures markets is confirmed by futures exchange operator CME Group itself:

http://gata.org/node/18925

As the founding editor of The Washington Monthly magazine, Charles Peters, often remarked: The scandal isn’t what’s illegal but what is perfectly legal.

Butler’s commentary is posted here.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
[email protected]

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Powell has been managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, a daily newspaper in Manchester, Connecticut, since 1974. He began working at the paper when he left high school in 1967. He writes a column about Connecticut issues that is published in a dozen other newspapers in the state and Rhode Island and often appears on radio and television public-affairs programs in Connecticut.

From 2004 through 2009 he was legislative chairman of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information. In 2006 he was inducted into the Academy of New England Journalists by the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the New England Society of Newspaper Editors.

In addition to the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, he is a member of the Connecticut, Manchester, and Vernon historical societies and the Churchill Centre.

 

 

 

www.gata.org

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