Are there really secret manipulations of the economy going on in
the shadows of Wall Street and Washington?
Do bears crap in the woods?
The NY Post’s controversial columnist John Crudele has thrown down the gauntlet,
declaring that the market is rigged. And not only does everyone know it, but
it is now being admitted.
The stock market is rigged.
When I started making that claim years ago — and provided solid evidence —
people scoffed. Some called it a conspiracy theory, tinfoil
hats and that sort of stuff. Most people just ignored me.
But that’s not happening anymore. The dirty secret is out.
Ed Yardeni, a longtime Wall Street guru who isn’t one of
the clowns of the bunch, said flat out last week that the market was
being propped up. “These markets are all rigged, and I don’t say that
critically. I just say that factually,” he asserted on CNBC.
Yardeni’s claim is the most basic one: that the Federal Reserve won’t do
anything that will upset Wall Street and, in fact, is doing all it can to
help the stock market.
So the Federal Reserve is propping up Wall Street, and the economy by
extension, not only by issuing free money through QE3, but buying up bonds
and shares as well.
This form of manipulation extends globally, with many other central banks
propping up the market, and even the U.S. government… as a means of covert
proxy investment:
The Bank of Japan — and other central bankers around the world —
could easily be purchasing shares of American companies to help out the US
stock market.
And Japan could even be doing it with the blessing of Washington, which is
afraid any direct intervention in equities on its part would be discovered by
nosy people like me.
Last fall, we learned that one American exchange has made intervention in
— rigging — foreign governments easier and cheaper to accomplish. In October,
it emerged that CME Group, the Chicago exchange that trades options
and commodities, had an incentive program under which foreign central banks
could buy stock market derivatives like the Standard & Poor’s
futures contracts at a discount.
According to Crudele, Japan is encouraging its private sector engage in
the shadow market boosting as well – you know, for the greater good.
That’s called rigging the market for a higher purpose, or hoping people
who can afford to invest in stocks will make lots of money and spend it.
Underneath it all, the market rigging creates unfair advantage by
operating under false pretenses:
The bigger problem is this: If stock prices are artificially inflated,
nobody can tell what a company is really worth.”
Recently, SHTF reported that former SEC director John Ramsay also
admitted the market is rigged, stating “Today’s rules have been crafted to
the benefit of insiders.”
The same article cited an author following the manipulations of Wall
Street:
“The market is rigged against retail investors, has questioned the tactics
involved in using algorithms to buy and sell shares in fractions of a
second.”
Of course, if we listened to comedians instead of experts, we would have
known that long ago.
The late George Carlin said it better than anyone probably could: “The
game is rigged!”
