Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - JP Morgan Metals Desk a 'Criminal Enterprise' - FOMC This Wednesday

"U.S. prosecutors took an unusually aggressive turn in their investigation of price fixing at JPMorgan Chase & Co., describing its precious metals trading desk as a criminal enterprise operating inside the bank for nearly a decade.

The prosecutors charged the head of JPMorgan’s global precious metals trading operation and two others on Monday, accusing them of “conspiracy to conduct the affairs of an enterprise involved in interstate or foreign commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity.”

Tom Schoenberg and David Voreacos, JPMorgan’s Metals Desk Was a Criminal Enterprise


"From the very beginning of the year to the last two days of 2013, JPMorgan has dominated and controlled the price of silver and gold.

JPMorgan’s short market corners at the start of 2013 amounted to a 21% net share of the entire COMEX gold futures market (minus spreads) and an astounding (but typical) 35% of the entire COMEX silver market.  No single entity had ever held such outsized and anti-competitive shares of any important regulated futures market.  It is unreasonable not to associate such extreme market corners with what followed in price."

Ted Butler, 3 January 2014


"Holder doubtless seriously believed at first that in a time of financial crisis, he was doing the right thing in constructing new forms of justice for banks, where nobody but the shareholders actually had to pay for crime.  You've heard of victimless crimes; Holder created the victimless punishment.

But in the end, it was pretty convenient, wasn't it, that 'the right thing' also happened to be the strategy that preserved Democratic Party relationships with big-dollar donors, kept the client base at Holder's old firm nice and fat, made the influential rich immeasurably richer and allowed Eric Holder himself to crash-land into a giant pile of money upon resignation.  What a coincidence!"

Matt Taibbi, Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent


"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne
und die trägt er im Gesicht
und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
doch das Messer sieht man nicht."

Berthold Brecht, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, 1928

Today was more 'risk off' than the major stock indices might have demonstrated.

Both the Dollar the the precious metals rose.

Oil was substantially higher on the attack on the Saudi oil fields that is being blamed on the Yemen Houthi, and by association and supply of weapons, Iran.

The US announced that three traders at JPM were being charged with criminal manipulation of the precious metals markets.

Indeed, the prosecutors used racketeering and criminal enterprise language that suggested the possible application of RICO statute to the Bank.

Let's see if anything genuine comes of this. It has not done so in the past.

And the usual stiffs and hacks will say that this is just a few traders gaming some deals. Nothing to see here. Move along. We like things the way they are.

After all we have seen in so many markets, how anyone can just dismiss this as just a few bad apples seems to be almost incredible.  

They have no good judgement and no shame.  They have blinded themselves with their egos, their greed, and the love of the familiar favor of corruption.  It is best to see things as they are and judge accordingly.

It is important to note that this criminal activity occurred over a long period of time, during the Obama Administration.

Eric Holder and Gary Gensler had an awful, chronically negligent, and inexcusable track record of upholding the law when it came to the Banks, and with their friends and donors on Wall Street.

The Fed, that other chronically negligent and shockingly conflicted and compromised regulatory body will announce their rate decision on Wednesday. The Fed is expected to cut 25 bps.

We will see the September stock market option expiration on Friday.

The revelations are just beginning. There is so much more.

Have a pleasant evening.

Die 3 Groschen-Oper - The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera, Die 3 Groschen-Oper, is a 1931 musical film directed by G. W. Pabst for the Weimar Berlin based Nero-Film AG.   It is loosely based on the highly successful musical drama of the same name by Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht that opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.

The film is set in Victorian London, and focuses on the criminality and corruption of Macheath, Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife, and his associates, including an old army comrade the chief of police, Tiger Brown.   Macheath sees and quickly woos Polly Peachum, incurring the wrath of her powerful father, who outfits and trains the large army of beggars who populate the substrata of imperial London.

The original stage production was much more a scathing critique of financial capitalism than the film. Brecht broke with the Nero production when they refused to use his rewrites, which had become more sharply politicial.

In the film the street singer is played by Ernst Busch, who was an ardent socialist like Brecht, and become quite famous after the war with the Communists in East Germany. Kurt Weill was married to the singer, Lotta Lenya, who plays Jenny in both the play and the film, and found a successful career in the West after fleeing Germany.

By 1933, when Weill and Brecht were forced to leave Germany by the Nazi Party's Machtergreifung, or bloodless coup d'etat, the play had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times on European stages.

The original street singer was played by the actor Kurt Gerron, who rose to fame in his role opposite Marlene Dietrich in Der Blaue Engel. Gerron, who refused Weill's pleas to emigrate to the US because he was afraid of change, was executed by the Nazis after helping to produce an infamous propaganda film at the concentration camp at Theresienstadt.