A Crack in the Gold-Silver Manipulation Dike?

• A Crack in the Dike?
  by Theodore Butler, http://silverseek.com/
  Tuesday’s announcement by the Department of Justice of a guilty plea by a former trader of JPMorgan for systemic “spoofing” and price manipulation of gold, silver, platinum and palladium traded on the COMEX and NYMEX futures exchanges (owned by the CME Group) sure seemed like a very big deal to me for a number of reasons. The infractions occurred from 2009 to 2015 and the trader admitted to engaging in a conspiracy to commit market manipulation on hundreds of occasions, with the knowledge and consent of his immediate supervisors. Please take the time to read this, as it is remarkably plainspoken.
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  https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-precious-metals-trader-pleads-guilty-commodities-fraud-and-spoofing-conspiracy 
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  … the announcement by the DOJ was remarkable in many ways, not the least of which is that this is a criminal case which involves jail time and not a civil case which only involves monetary fines. Also, the announcement makes clear that this is very much an ongoing investigation and it’s hard to see how there won’t be further fall out for JPMorgan, since it’s obvious the guilty trader was doing what others were doing at the bank. It’s also hard for me to see how a trader involved in systemic criminal market activity in coordination with other traders at the bank doesn’t equate to systemic criminal activity by the bank itself. Notable, of course, is that of all the blizzard of spoofing and short term price manipulation cases brought recently in silver and gold, this is the first to zero in on traders at JPMorgan.
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  I am struck by the DOJ’s announcement not mentioning the CFTC, although I may be reading too much into that. Interestingly, the guilty plea covers the time the CFTC had a supposed formal investigation in place into a silver market manipulation as a result of the concentrated short position of JPMorgan revealed in the August 2008 Bank Participation Report; a five year investigation that went nowhere. There’s no question in my mind that the CFTC handles JPMorgan with kid gloves as a result of some type of free get out of jail card emanating from the Bear Stearns takeover of March 2008. The DOJ, much to its credit, doesn’t appear to be part of any such arrangement. That’s not to say that the CFTC won’t be involved as the DOJ pursues this case, just that it’s odd at this point that this is an exclusive DOJ production.
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  read more.

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