Ted Butler: A Secret and Illegal Agreement

There has to be a good reason why the CFTC won’t openly address the clear evidence of a COMEX silver manipulation, as well as why JP Morgan and the CME Group would turn away from direct accusations of wrongdoing that would constitute slander and libel if such allegations weren’t true. Something has to be holding the CFTC back from addressing that which should and must be addressed. Actually, I think there are two reasons.
One, as I’ve long held concerns the agency rejecting any thought of a COMEX silver manipulation early on, more than 30 years ago when I first alleged such a manipulation. Basically, it’s nothing more than a continued doubling down of manipulation denial because how does a government agency openly admit to failing in its prime mission for decades despite increasingly clear evidence of such failure? This denial doubling down is reflected in the unusual circumstance of the agency being forced to argue with every single point I ever raised about silver. But it’s simply not possible that everything I say about silver to be 100% incorrect. At a minimum, that would be insulting to those who find value in what I write. Besides, I rely, almost exclusively, on the agency’s own data to make the case and it almost ends up with the agency arguing against its own data.
But there’s an even more compelling reason for the CFTC to deny allegations of a silver manipulation that burst onto the scene nine years ago – the takeover of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan in March 2008. As the public record indicates, this was at the start of the financial crisis and came about with the U.S. Treasury Dept. and the Federal Reserve requesting JP Morgan’s assistance in rescuing Bear Stearns. You can be sure that since JP Morgan was being asked by the U.S. Government to, in effect, do it and the country a favor in taking over Bear that the bank would, in return, solicit and arrange for as many protections for JPM as possible. JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, has since lamented that he ever agreed to the takeover, but when it came to subsequent dealings in COMEX silver over the next nine years, it’s hard for me to see how it could have turned out any better than it did for the bank.
What no one knows is what private guarantees and assurances were granted to JP Morgan that have left it immune from the CFTC moving against JPM’s clearly illegal activities in silver over the past nine years. There’s no other way to explain how the crooks at JP Morgan continue to manipulate and fraudulently abuse the silver market for its own gain. Undoubtedly, JP Morgan was given a free get-out-of-jail card from future violations of commodity law when it came to it agreeing to acquire Bear Stearns. But after nine years of JP Morgan dominating the silver market in every way possible, was JPM’s immunity from having to behave legally in silver granted in perpetuity?

This post was published at Silverseek