Writing over the weekend for the Sharps Pixley bullion dealership in London, market analyst Lawrie Williams confided that he increasingly believes that the gold market is being rigged. Williams wrote that he has been pushed to such a conclusion by the growing number of smashes to the market out of the blue.
Williams wrote: "We have just seen yet another instance of a totally insane volume of notional gold hitting the futures markets, surely designed to stop any positive momentum for gold in its tracks. I say 'insane' because in a true fair market no one in their right minds would put so much on the market in such a short space of time even if it involves only paper gold rather than actual bullion. ...
"These 'flash crashes' in the precious metals prices seem to be happening every time we start to see positive moves in the gold price. That cannot be coincidental. [GATA board member] Ed Steer, who publishes a daily newsletter to subscribers, called it 'a picture-postcard waterfall decline' -- an apt description . ...
"Ed places the latest 'flash crash' firmly at the hands of JP Morgan and the other bullion banks that hold large short positions in the precious metals -- particularly in gold and silver -- and thus have a vested interest in keeping the price suppressed. Ed's views are well-known on market manipulation and are not seen as reality by some precious metals market mainstream observers, but these 'coincidental' flash crashes do seem increasingly to support his viewpoint as a counter-argument to what might be considered the mainstream financial establishment, which is very much in denial -- probably because such manipulation appears to be an integral part of doing business in the sector."
Bingo, Lawrie. Yes, the gold industry is the market-rigging industry, a giant real-life episode of "The Emperor's New Clothes," where everybody can see what is going on but no one dares say it except a few naive little kids who happened to pass by the parade, were not let in on the scheme, and only gradually deduced its evil and world-encompassing intent.
But things are changing if even some respected insiders like Williams and Dennis Gartman can question the scheme in public within a few hours of each other. Indeed, it has started to seem as if the central banks and governments masterminding the scheme are now in such stress that they can't worry about being caught -- that they know they have been caught and increasingly must resort to smashing the gold market in the open to try to warn off and intimidate investors, telling them in a crude way what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told them in testimony to Congress in 1998: "Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise":
https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/test...98/19980724.htm
But if they are not scared of being caught anymore, that doesn't mean that central banks are not still scared -- scared of losing control of what used to be markets.
Don't believe us? Then try putting to central banks and anyone in the gold industry the four crucial and for the moment essentially prohibited questions about gold:
1) Are governments and central banks active in the monetary metals markets or not?
2) Are the documents compiled by GATA from government archives and other official sources asserting such activity genuine or forgeries?
3) If governments and central banks are active in the monetary metals markets, is it just for fun or is it for policy purposes?
4) If such activity by governments and central banks is for policy purposes, do those purposes involve the traditional objectives of defeating an independent world currency that competes with government currencies and interferes with government control of interest rates and, indeed, interferes with control of the entire economy and society itself?
If you get any answers, please forward them to your secretary/treasurer, whose e-mail address is below.
Williams might try putting these questions to Sharps Pixley's own proprietor, Ross Norman, another gold market participant who has a respectable reputation to lose.
Williams' commentary is headlined "Europe Pushes Gold higher -- USA Slams It Down Yet Again!" and it's posted at Sharps Pixley here:
http://tinyurl.com/ybl9eadp
