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Silver market analyst Ted Butler writes today that
he has come to believe that the U.S. government, while not the instigator of
the silver price manipulation scheme, has become a participant in it and that
the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has purported to be
investigating the silver market for nearly four years, has been neutered by
the U.S. Treasury Department, which has given its market-rigging agent, JPMorganChase & Co., immunity from criminal
prosecution.
None of this should be so surprising, as even Butler
himself has noted that when the U.S. government demonetized silver in 1965,
President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed that the government would intervene in
the silver market as necessary to keep the price down, presumably by
dishoarding from the government's silver stockpile.
Signing the demonetization legislation, the
president said:
"Some have asked whether our silver coins will
disappear. The answer is very definitely -- no. Our present silver coins
won't disappear and they won't even become rarities. We estimate that there
are now 12 billion -- I repeat, more than 12 billion -- silver dimes and
quarters and half dollars that are now outstanding. We will make another
billion before we halt production. And they will be used side-by-side with
our new coins. Since the life of a silver coin is about 25 years, we expect
our traditional silver coins to be with us in large numbers for a long, long
time. If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say
this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be and it will be used
to keep the price of silver in line with its value."
Johnson's comments have been archived with other
presidential documents by the University of California at Santa Barbara here:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27108
Of course Johnson's promises about keeping silver
coins in circulation and keeping silver's price down were not fulfilled. The
government's silver stockpile was exhausted and U.S. silver coins did indeed
disappear from circulation. But the government's interest in suppressing the
price of the monetary metal, suppressing the value of a competitive currency,
endures.
Indeed, like so much in the U.S. government's gold
price suppression scheme, the silver price suppression scheme is largely a
matter of official public record rather than mere "conspiracy
theory." But GATA has no idea what it will take to induce mainstream
financial journalists to examine the official public record, even as we keep
urging them to do so.
Butler's commentary is headlined "The War on
Silver" and you can find it here.
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