Anyone note the correlation between the upturn in this and the economic crisis? What does Holder want to do? As he says, merely look at anti-competitive practices.
Posted on 12/12/2010 8:27:37 AM PST by Mojave
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.
The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There is a lot of rot in the derivative trade. Credit default swaps are the worst. That is where the biggest crooks trade.
The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.
Yes Virginia, there are conspiracies....
Purel BS! Secretive Public/Private finance relationships was the key ingredient in the mess that our founders ran away from in Europe in the 1700's. It is also what propped up the Monarchies in Europe before their collapse in the early 1900's (1914?).
Power Corrupts and Absolute Power tends to corrupt absolutely. ~ Lord Acton
Is Alex Jones writing for the NY Times???
Well its not a secret cabal any longer and———DUH!
Anyone note the correlation between the upturn in this and the economic crisis? What does Holder want to do? As he says, merely look at anti-competitive practices.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows...
--LEONARD COHEN, "everybody knows"
So come to see the finance editors of the New York Times agree with me that there is a 'banking elite' and even a 'secret banking elite' and it's reasonable to talk about them without it really being code words for talking about the Jews.
How refreshing.
I’m not concerned about who or what they are, and neither are the vast majority. I’m concerned that we’re off the rails to the tune of trillions and still throwing money at them. Something is seriously amiss, and trying to deflect with leftist protected class rhetoric isn’t flying anymore.
Oh, I completley agree. It’s a canard to make the charge that was made against me, and it’s really unfortunate if our language becomes so over-policed that we can’t string words together to form logical descriptions of everyday events and objects.
Banking Elite is an excellent phrase that describes perfectly that exact thing: the banking elite. The Times article goes on to ennumerate where they are drawn from: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Funny these names come up over and over again. When the Fed was forced to dump the names of the special loan recipients they were all featured heavily.
When the maipulation of the silver market is being probed it is JPMorgan Chase and HSBC.
When it’s ‘where do all the heavy hitters in the treasury & administration come from’ it’s Goldman-Sachs: Paulson, Rubin, Kashkeri, Larry Sommers and by extension Geithner.
So, we keep getting back to the same short list of firms who sit upon the commanding heights of the financial pyramid, a pyramid which has been exempt for the overall leveling (dis-intermediation) that almost all other sectors have gone through in the last 30 years.
CFTC Commissioner Alleges Silver Market Manipulation; Silver Price Soars
By Patrick A. Heller on October 26th, 2010
Categories: Gold and Silver Commentary, Precious Metals
At a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Public Hearing on Anti-Manipulation and Disruptive Trading Practices this morning, CFTC Bart Chilton dropped a bombshell, alleging that the silver market has been manipulated.
A couple weeks ago, Chilton had stated that if the CFTC would not soon issue its own report into its investigation into possible manipulation of the silver market, then he would issue his own statement. Today is when he let loose. His full statement can be read at
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/Commissioner BartChilton/chiltonstatement102610.html.
The two most important paragraphs of Chilton’s statement are:
“I believe that there have been repeated attempts to influence prices in the silver markets. There have been fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control that price. Based on what I have been told by members of the public, and reviewing in publicly available documents, I believe violations to the Commodity Exchange Act (ACT) have taken place in silver markets and that any such violation of the law in this regard should be prosecuted.”
“In saying this, I am fully aware of the prohibition from divulging trader names or information about their positions. I am extremely careful not to violate the law in this, or any, regard. I also cannot pre-judge anything the agency may do with regard to our silver investigation, or any other matter.”
Some analysts who have been interviewed by Chilton don’t think he would stick his neck out with such statements unless he had ample documentation to prove them.
For once, the mainstream media quickly picked up Chilton’s statement. In late European trading today, gold was in the $1340′s, and silver was around $23.70. Then the US government and its trading partners went into action to suppress prices. By the time of Chilton’s statement, the price of gold had been pushed down to $1,327 and silver to $23.16.
As the news coverage of Chilton’s statement mushroomed, metals prices took off. Gold hit a high of $1,342 and silver $23.97 before subsiding slightly going into the COMEX close.
In his statement, Chilton pointed out that the CFTC had been investigating possible manipulation of the silver market for more than two years. But, he also warned that proving the legal standard of actual market manipulation was extremely difficult. Chilton’s statement concluded with, “I am hopeful that the agency will speak publicly about the investigation in the very near future and when they do that it will be in a more granular fashion than I am permitted from doing at this time.”
As of October 19, eight or fewer traders owned short silver positions of approximately 290 million ounces. Total COMEX silver inventories have fluctuated in the 110-112 million ounces range over the past month. There is no way that these large short positions, of which JPMorgan Chase is suspected of having greatest exposure, can possibly be covered with physical metal. If a run on COMEX silver inventories continues, most contracts will have to be settled for cash—at prices far higher than today’s levels.
I anticipate that the major surge in demand for physical silver will be underway by the end of this week. In my judgment, there is little time left to establish your position at anywhere near today’s prices.
It’s supposed to be illegal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion
According to neoclassical price-determination theory and game theory, the independence of suppliers forces prices to their minimum, increasing efficiency and decreasing the price determining ability of each individual firm. However, if firms collude to increase prices loss of sales is minimized as consumers lack alternative choices at lower prices. This benefits the colluding firms at the cost of efficiency to society.
Indicators
Practices that suggest collusion include:
* Uniform prices
* A penalty for price discounts
* Advance notice of price changes
* Information exchange
I want to propound on something else.
I haven’t read the whole article but so far, it’s doing a good job.
In a nutshell . . . .
There are some business that need to reduce the risk of price swings. In the NYT example, it’s a fuel supplier. A small time fuel supplier can’t buy heating oil at $3.00 and sell it two months later for $2.50. Well he could but it’s inefficient for all those small time fuel suppliers to keep enough money to hedge against deflation.
Banks have a lot more cash on hand and can reduce the variability of their cash flow by insuring fuel suppliers, farmers, home builders, mortgage originators, etc. etc.
They will push their risk to the limit though, calculating exactly how much cash they need and not one cent more.
At some point, in 5, 10 or 20 years, they are wrong, they don’t have enough cash.
Here is where the cartel comes in. All banks know they are in the same boat. To maximize profits, they need a minimum of cash reserves. The banker of last resort is the Federal Reserve. The bankers then go to congress, singing one tune and eliminating dissenting voices. No one who knows the real numbers, the real risk, provides congress an alternative view.
Congress (and by proxy the tax payer) then has two choices. A) Write an uniformed law of B) do what the banks ask. They do not know how much cash the banks need on hand.
Here is where the Fed steps in. If they banks don’t have enough cash, the Fed steps in GUARANTEEING the inflation that the small time business needs to hedge against price deflation.
Simple.
Agreed. Transparency is a myth.
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