The CFTC was complicit in turning a blind eye to this, stonewalling and whitewashing the corruption, as were many market commentators and participants. Ted Butler and GATA did a wonderful job of highlighting this enormous fraud but were ignored and even vilified for the past twelve years in the same vein as whistle blower Harry Markopolos was in raising concerns about Madoff's investment scheme.
Bart Chilton is speaking out as he said a few weeks ago he would if the CFTC was not making progress in correct this travesty. This is the sort of reform that the people were seeking when they swept the Democrats into office, a reform which they never received.
This obviously should be investigated by an independent body, given the regulatory capture held by the banks who manipulated the market to the detriment of the world in suppressing prices and creating an artificial shortage that will be painful to unwind.
This is not a partisan issue, but involves politicians of both parties going back twenty years or more, in both London and New York. And the corruption is pervasive and ongoing in multiple US finanical and commodity markets. The regulators and ratings agencies have not been doing their jobs.
Some will attempt to dismiss what Mr. Chilton is saying here as inconclusive. Keep in mind that he is a high profile CFTC official, and what he says comes through a 50,000 watt megaphone, so he must choose his words with great care. But this is almost unprecedented for an official to speak out against his own administration.
The response to these sorts of revelations seem to be a blanket of media silence and whispered character assassination, which is the mark in trade of those who have no sense of duty, honor, and country. Their crime is betrayal of the public trust, and the public's fault is apathetic complicity. 'Silver did not rally on the news, it must not be significant. I did not hear about this on television, so it must not be true.'
But the dominos are starting to fall, and more revelations are to come.
CFTC's Chilton raises alarm about silver market
WASHINGTON
Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:30am EDT
Oct 26 (Reuters) - There have been repeated attempts to influence prices in silver markets, Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the U.S. futures regulator, said on Tuesday.
"There have been fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control that price," Chilton said in prepared remarks before a Commodity Futures Trading Commission meeting.
Chilton said he could not pre-judge the outcome of the CFTC's ongoing investigation of the silver markets, but said public deserves some answers to their concerns.
Gold and silver are no bubbles. It is a reverse Ponzi scheme that goes back for decades, that has sold many more ounces of metal than can possibly be delivered at today's artificially low prices, that was tolerated and even promoted by those who were running a monetary control fraud, quite probably the greatest in history. The banks and insiders are trapped and desperate, trying to bluff and buy themselves out of another fraud yet again. They will never give up, but will have to be rooted out. It is unlikely that reform can come from within, since the righteous anger of the people and the will to change will be co-opted by those very forces that have manipulated the system and perpetrated the fraud.
Fortunes will be made and lost, and careers ruined, as the revelations of manipulation and corruption are made over the next ten years. And this will make for dangerous times, as an empire of deceit collapses not at once, but in stages. There will be new threats and more bailouts for the banks to be paid by 'austerity' for the common person who is caught up in their own web of petty diversions, apathetic cynicism and denial. There is little better example of this than Britain but America is not far behind.
But the tide has turned and change is in the wind.
Banks short 20,000 tonnes of gold.
Embry: Commercial Signal Failure in the Metals May Be Imminent
"A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in."
Thomas B. Macaulay
