I am hearing from people who say they have received brief email replies from CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton. Apparently if there is a move afoot to can the silver investigation without presenting any findings after four years, he has not gotten the memo. He has informed the press about 'the erroneous story' according to some people who say they have heard from him. If this was a front page article on the Financial Times one would hope they double confirmed it, and the sources were good. Otherwise one can risk being badly used, especially in the financial press. So let's see what happens. As I said in my lead sentence from last night, this could have been a 'trial balloon' to gauge the reaction and blowback if they did ditch the investigation, not wanting to expose the findings, or expose a coverup to later instances of perjury.
This leak to the FT *could* just be a 'trial balloon' by Mr. Gensler and his crew to see if they can get away with it. But that seems more like the plot of a novel. This could be one of the best examples of the credibility trap in action. The government regulators can say nothing because of the shadow government's long term complicity.
Mr. Gensler was the assistant to Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the 1990's and is a Goldman alumnus. Perhaps Bart as a dedicated civil servant is not on the A-team.
