While it may be hard to believe, it seems that the U.S. Commodity Futures
Trading Commission was unaware of Deutsche Bank's agreement to settle a
class-action lawsuit accusing it of manipulating the gold and silver markets
until GATA repeatedly sought to bring the matter to the commission's
attention over the last week.
The news of the settlement agreement broke with Reuters and Bloomberg News
reports on Wednesday and Thursday, April 13 and 14:
http://www.gata.org/node/16375
http://www.gata.org/node/16380
The reports said that Deutsche Bank had agreed in principle not only to
pay financial damages to the plaintiffs but also to provide evidence against
the other defendants in the suit.
Since the CFTC has jurisdiction over the U.S. commodity futures markets and
since the commission purported to have undertaken a five-year investigation
of the silver market, closing it in September 2013 upon concluding that there
was no cause for action –
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6709-13
-- it was natural to seek comment from the commission about the Deutsche
Bank news.
So on Saturday, April 16, your secretary/treasurer e-mailed the
commission's news media office as follows, providing the Internet link to the
Bloomberg News report:
"Does the commission have any reaction to Deutsche Bank's admission
to manipulating the gold and silver markets, as reported by Bloomberg News
this week? Is the commission responding to Deutsche Bank's admission in any
way? As you may recall, some years ago the commission reported that it had
investigated the silver market and had found nothing improper. Is the
commission reconsidering that conclusion?"
Receiving no response, on Tuesday, April 19, your secretary/treasurer sent
by facsimile machine a letter to the office of the chairman of the CFTC, Tim
Massad, reading: "As I am unable to get any acknowledgement from your
commission's press office, could you answer my questions here? Does the
commission have any reaction to Deutsche Bank's admission to manipulating the
gold and silver markets, as reported by various news organizations last week?
Is the commission responding to Deutsche Bank's admission in any way? As you
may recall, some years ago the commission reported that it had investigated the
silver market and had found nothing improper. Is the commission reconsidering
that conclusion? Thanks for your help."
Having received no acknowledgment of that letter as well, yesterday –
Friday, April 22 – your secretary/treasurer telephoned the CFTC's press
office and within a half hour of leaving a message received a cordial call
back from an assistant to the director. He said he was unaware of the
Deutsche Bank story and could find no reference to it in the commission's
compendium of news reports of interest to the commission's work.
Your secretary/treasurer conceded that the story is being largely
suppressed by Western financial news organizations and sent him the links to
the Reuters and Bloomberg stories as well as a link to the original complaint
in the class-action lawsuit. He said he would consult his superiors and hoped
to reply to me next week.
Of course all this gives the impression that the CFTC not only doesn't
know what's going on in its jurisdiction but also that it doesn't want
to know. It is additional evidence that certain commodity market rigging is
outside the commission's concern because the U.S. government and other
governments are the actual perpetrators, surreptitious market rigging by the
government being specifically authorized by the Gold Exchange Act of 1934 as
amended in the 1970s –
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/inte...ages/esf-ind...
-- and because of the admission in recent official filings by CME Group,
operator of the major U.S. futures exchanges, that it provides volume trading
discounts to governments and central banks for surreptitiously trading all
futures contracts on its exchanges:
http://www.gata.org/node/14385
http://www.gata.org/node/14411
All this also seems to confirm that the prerequisites of this market
rigging are the cowardice of the monetary metals mining industry, which
refuses to protest it, and the cowardice of mainstream financial news organizations,
which refuse to report it.