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Orwellian CFTC, which ignored years of silver price manipulation, now going after Reddit Apes
Orwellian CFTC, which ignored years of silver price manipulation, now going after Reddit Apes
On Monday 1 March, an article in Bloomberg Law by CFTC connected lawyers from law firm Clifford Chance revealed that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is reportedly investigating retail silver trader activity in the silver price and that the US Department of Justice looks set to investigate as well.
Before looking at this shocker of an Orwellian development, it’s helpful to provide some context on the CFTC’s track behavior in this area and to show how hypocritical such a development would be.
Rewinding exactly one month previously to Monday 1 February, as the spot price of silver rallied to an 8-year high of just under US$ 30 per troy ounce amid heightened retail interest and the emergence of the #SilverSqueeze, it was predictable that the establishment on Wall Street and in Washington DC, an establishment with a collective vested interest in a low and suppressed silver price, would feel the heat and attempt to counteract the rally.
On the regulator front, this was demonstrated by none other than the US Government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), whose acting Chairman Rostin “Russ” Behnam, released an unprecedented statement, actually on 01 February, saying that:
“The CFTC is closely monitoring recent activity in the silver markets. The Commission is communicating with fellow regulators, the exchanges, and stakeholders to address any potential threats to the integrity of the derivatives markets for silver, and remains vigilant in surveilling these markets for fraud and manipulation.”
Although a short statement from the CFTC, it signaled panic, panic on Wall Street and in Washington, that a #SilverSqueeze triggered demand surge in physical silver could pressure the supply side and thus trigger the collapse of the gigantic ongoing paper silver trading charade.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Price Manipulation In The Oil Markets?
Price Manipulation In The Oil Markets?
According to Reuters, Arcadia Petroleum Ltd, and its Parnon Energy unit have settled a $16.5 million civil suit filed against them for manipulating futures prices. This comes after a prior settlement with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission whereby both entities were banned for trading futures for three years. Whether they admitted wrong doing is unclear but the case provides more evidence that the supposed “free” capital markets in the US are far from free.
Arcadia was accused of artificially creating a shortage at Cushing, OK, then using futures and options to manipulate prices as they spiked in the summer of 2008 before subsequently crashing, along with equity markets, in time for the fall 2008 elections. The parties involved took huge long positions to drive up prices, then dumped them for a big profit. Then they took short positions to drive prices back down.
Related: Forget The Noise: Oil Prices Won’t Crash Again
This comes on top of cases in which banks were caught manipulating LIBOR(London InterBank Offered Rate) and Foreign Exchange rates as well as theongoing probes on gold price manipulation. In all of these cases fines were issued but serious jail time, as far as we know, wasn’t.
Price manipulation is running rampant and it seems that instead of regulators issuing stiffer jail sentences to deter it, slaps on the wrist via fines are becoming more and more common. I went on record saying that the crash in oil last fall from the $70s was driven mostly by media hysteria either of their own invention or fed (no pun intended) to them by parties who stood to benefit from the fall of oil.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Next Round of the Crisis Will Reveal that the Entire System is Based on Fraud | Zero Hedge
The Next Round of the Crisis Will Reveal that the Entire System is Based on Fraud | Zero Hedge.
The biggest problem with the financial markets today is the fraud.
Fraud is endemic in the financial system today. We know that the currency, stock, bond, and even commodity markets have ALL been manipulated by Investment Banks or Central Banks.
No matter how sophisticated your analysis is, if your data inputs are garbage, your forecasts are garbage. We now know that the prices in just about every asset under the sun are garbage. Good luck computing with that.
Then there is balance sheet fraud. After the 2008 Crash, the regulators suspended accounting standards that required the banks to price their assets at market-based values. The reason the regulators did this was because the market priced these assets at pennies on the Dollar, if not ZERO.
This meant that most banks were insolvent and bankrupt.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Resorts to Illegality to Protect Failed Policies — Paul Craig Roberts & Dave Kranzler – PaulCraigRoberts.org
Paul Craig Roberts & Dave Kranzler
In a blatant and massive market intervention, the price of gold was smashed on Friday. Right after the Comex opened on Friday morning 7,008 paper gold contracts representing 20 tonnes of gold were dumped in the New York Comex futures market at 8:50 a.m. EST. At 12:35 a.m. EST 10,324 contracts representing 30 tonnes of gold were dropped on the Comex futures market:
No relevant news or events occurred that would have triggered this sudden sell-off in gold. Furthermore, none of the other markets experienced any unusual movement (stocks, bonds, currencies).
The intervention in the gold market occurred on the Friday after the U.S. had observed its Thanksgiving Day holiday. It is one of the lowest volume trading days of the year on the Comex.
A rational person who wants to short gold because he believes the price will fall wants to obtain the highest price for the contracts he sells in order to maximize his profits when he settles the contracts. If his sale of contracts drives down the price of gold, he reduces the spread between the amount he receives for his contracts and the price at settlement, thus minimizing his profits, or if the price goes against him maximizing his losses. A bona fide seller speculating on the direction of the gold price would choose a more liquid market period and dribble out his contract sales so as not to cause a significant impact on the price.
As you can see from the price-action on the graph, massive sales concentrated within a few minutes minimize sales proceeds and are at odds with profit maximization. A rational seller would not behave in this way. What we are witnessing in the bullion futures market are short sales designed to drive down the price of bullion. This is price manipulation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
