Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Today at Wall Street on Parade, Pam and Russ Martens note that JPMorganChase Bank holds 53% of all the monetary metals derivatives contracts in the U.S. banking system, through the bank and some of its traders have been criminally charged with rigging the monetary metals markets.
The Martenses write: "It is hard to understate the regulatory failure of allowing JPMorgan Chase to continue to have this outsized presence in the precious metals derivatives market."
Well, yes and no. For it's not hard to understand the regulatory failure. It is almost certainly a matter of law -- a matter of JPMorganChase's operating as the agent of the U.S. government in surreptitiously controlling gold and silver prices to protect the value of the U.S. dollar and U.S. government bonds.
This rigging is completely legal, since the U.S. government is authorized by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 and related legislation to intervene in and manipulate any market in the world.
The Martenses long have done tremendous investigative reporting about corruption and unfairness in the financial system. So maybe they won't resent a suggestion for a little more such reporting.
That is, how about pressing the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as to whether it has jurisdiction over manipulative futures trading undertaken by or at the behest of the U.S. government?
That question has been put to the CFTC by both GATA and U.S. Rep. Alex X. Mooney, R-West Virginia, and the commission has refused to answer:
http://www.gata.org/node/19917
http://www.gata.org/node/20089
Of course that refusal is almost as good as an admission that JPMorganChase rigs markets for the U.S. government, but not quite.
Twenty-two years ago in U.S. District Court in Boston, seeking dismissal of GATA's lawsuit accusing the U.S. government, JPMorganChase, other bullion banks, and the Bank for International Settlements of surreptitiously rigging the gold market, an assistant U.S. attorney told the court that the government had the power to do exactly what the lawsuit complained of:
The assistant U.S. attorney did not admit that the government was doing what the lawsuit complained of, but the government's claiming the power should have provoked a little journalistic curiosity. It still should. Of course no such curiosity has yet been demonstrated by mainstream financial news organizations.
So if you want to know why the government lets JPMorganChase get away with so much of what seems like criminality, it's because in certain circumstances JPMorganChase is the government and the government is JPMorganChase, and while what they do together may be immoral and concealed, it's perfectly legal -- just as the biggest scandals usually are.
Today's analysis at Wall Street on Parade is headlined "After Being Criminally Charged for Rigging Precious Metals, JPMorgan Chase Controls 53% of All Precious Metals Contracts Held by Banks" and it can be found here:
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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