The precious metals turn in a weaker performance today based on dollar strength versus the euro.
The markets had a little difficulty in determining whether the action taken this morning with regard to their version of QE was hawkish or dovish.
Dovish finally won the day, and the euro slumped against Uncle Buck.
The most interesting news of the day is the discovery of a 'smoking gun' in the papers from the Deutsche Bank lawsuit and settlement that names a group of other Banks as active manipulators in manipulating the silver market.
You may read about that
here and in a few other articles in today's selected reading. I particularly enjoyed the Wall Street On Parade piece that refers to the Banks as being a
Silver Market Mafia.
Most informed participants could see the obvious price rigging in the gold and silver markets over the past several years. Normal trading does not instruct one to dump billions of dollars in contract into the quiet market off hours.
And in fact this is a well known, time-tested market rigging ploy that some banks had internally referred to as the
Dr. Evil Strategy.
How ironic that the CFTC, the primary regulatory body for commodities in the US, studied the silver market for about five years and then decided not to bother issuing any report, save for a simple statement that 'they found no evidence of market manipulation.'
This is the sad story of our times of regulatory capture and pervasive 'soft corruption' in political circles. As Senator Dick Durbin noted in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, 'the banks still own the place.'
The American people, and the people of a few other developed nations, are sick of this duplicity and dishonesty in the political and professional class.
As well they might be. And their attempts at redress and reform are ignored or stifled, and so the anger keeps building to what some fear will be a 'Versailles Moment.' One would hope not that, but history suggests that this sort of situation does not end well when if finally does.
Have a pleasant evening.
