Always, it seems, there is spin being applied to reality as the elites attempt to condition the underlings to accept indignities from wearing face diapers and suffering lockdowns to coping with the rocketing cost of living and not kicking up a fuss when Clueless Joe claims zero inflation.
Sometimes the propagandizing, the massaging of the truth, rises to outright manipulation so egregious that even a questionable legal system is forced to concede this and prosecute.
Such is the case regarding precious metals – gold and silver, and other lesser-traded examples such as platinum and palladium.
As a long-time holder of gold and silver and related investments due to my belief that our economic system is a house of cards, I am acutely aware of mysterious price action in the metals. The metals tend to drop on cue, despite overnight rises in Asia and Europe, when COMEX trading opens at 8:20 a.m. Eastern.
There used to be curious price action consistently around the aptly called London Gold Fix, which was re-christened in 2015 but still twice daily announces a price for gold in U.S. dollars as decided by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). This is an opaque process in which price is decided, not determined by open market operations.
There is a precious metals analyst named Ted Butler who for years publicly has been accusing U.S. trading firms of outright fraud in precious metals trading and the guy never gets sued, which speaks volumes.
Through the years, there have been periodic legal judgments against these firms regarding trading irregularities. But last week came a dilly when the global head of J.P. Morgan’s precious metals trading (a former LBMA member, too) and a J.P. Morgan colleague of his in precious metals were convicted of multiple trading offenses by a U.S. federal court.
One of the techniques of manipulators in general is called “spoofing” in which false orders are put into the computerized system, trying to induce price movement, and then pulled before the common folk can act on the manipulators’ specific orders, which most often are sells.
This is made possible by the firms having super computers with intense speed, located physically close to exchanges to gain nanoseconds in the execution, allowing them to front run the public.
By flooding sell orders into the system, this can create a stampede that continues due to the spooked public. Think of the stereotypical scene from western movies in which one gun shot or lightning strike sends the cattle herd stampeding.
You need human examples? Think of yelling fire in a crowded theater, having a great Black Friday sales price on a big-screen TV, or giving away cheese at the corner food pantry.
In each instance, rationality gives way to mad impulse. By the time sanity is regained, in the case of precious metals trading, those short (betting on declining prices) can buy cheap, run up prices and set in motion another decline to benefit from the movement.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Silver is the poster child for manipulation. This is both a precious and industrial metal, whose uses are massive, ranging from solar panels to use in all those nifty electronics society can’t manage to live without.
And yet silver sits at $19.06 an ounce as I write this Sunday afternoon, having plunged 46 cents in Friday trading. Silver was $50 an ounce in 1980 and nearly touched that range again in 2011. You name me another such widely used commodity whose much greater all-time high was achieved 40-plus years ago.
Oil, for example, SPIKED to $35 a barrel back in 1980 when silver was topping out at $50 an ounce. Have you checked the price of oil lately?
It is encouraging that legal action is being taken here and there against this practice of precious metals manipulation, but it’s quickly forgotten and strange price action resumes.
What would really hearten me would be if the propping up of investment markets by the Plunge Protection Team, or the investment manipulation by gabby members of the Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee (often referred to by skeptics as the Open Mouth Committee) would be widely discussed and critiqued.
It would be nice if LameStream media and social media outlets would be held to task legally for one-sided presentation and censoring.
It would be encouraging if electoral integrity and border security were considered desirable and necessary to the future success of the country.
As my late, terribly politically incorrect father would have said, don’t hold your hand over your butt (he didn’t say butt) waiting for that to happen or you will die of constipation.
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