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Gold Price "Manipulated For A Decade", Repeatedly Slammed Lower, Bloomberg Reports
While the FT promptly retracted an article on precisely the topic of gold manipulation from earlier this week (recorded for posterity here), Bloomberg appears to not have had the same "editorial" concerns and pressures, and today released an article once again slamming the final conspiracy theory that while every other asset class is manipulated, gold is in a pristine class of its own, untouched by close-banging, price fixing traders or central bankers, and reports that "the London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say."
Of course, over the past 5 years we have reported time and again how official gold manipulation started in earnest some time in the 1960s (who can forget the "reshuffle club") but we will start with a decade.
Here is what BBG finds:
Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University’s Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper.
“The structure of the benchmark is certainly conducive to collusion and manipulation, and the empirical data are consistent with price artificiality,” they say in the report, which hasn’t yet been submitted for publication. “It is likely that co-operation between participants may be occurring.”
The paper is the first to raise the possibility that the five banks overseeing the century-old rate -- Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Nova Scotia, HSBC Holdings Plc and Societe Generale SA -- may have been actively working together to manipulate the benchmark. It also adds to pressure on the firms to overhaul the way the rate is calculated. Authorities around the world, already investigating the manipulation of benchmarks from interest rates to foreign exchange, are examining the $20 trillion gold market for signs of wrongdoing.
Tell us something we didn't already know. Then again, this time may be different, because one of the authors, Abrantes-Metz, advises the European Union and the International Organization of Securities Commissions on financial benchmarks. According to Bloomberg, her 2008 paper “Libor Manipulation?” helped uncover the rigging of the London interbank offered rate, which has led financial firms including Barclays Plc and UBS AG to be fined about $6 billion in total. She is a paid expert witness to lawyers, providing economic analysis for litigation. Metz heads credit policy research at ratings company Moody’s.
By way of background, the history of gold price fixing is well-known and is one of the longest running traditions in banking:
The rate-setting ritual dates back to 1919. Dealers in the early years met in a wood-paneled room in Rothschild’s office in the City of London and raised little Union Jacks to indicate interest. Now the fix is calculated twice a day on telephone conferences at 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. London time. The calls usually last 10 minutes, though they can run more than an hour.
So what exactly did this "erudite" authority on manipulation uncover?
Abrantes-Metz and Metz screened intraday trading in the spot gold market from 2001 to 2013 for sudden, unexplained moves that may indicate illegal behavior. From 2004, they observed frequent spikes in spot gold prices during the afternoon call. The moves weren’t replicated during the morning call and hadn’t happened before 2004, they found.
There’s no obvious explanation as to why the patterns began in 2004, why they were more prevalent in the afternoon fixing, and why price moves tended to be downwards, Abrantes-Metz said in a telephone interview this week.
“This is a first attempt to uncover potentially manipulative behavior and the results are concerning,” she said. “It’s down to regulators to establish why there are such striking patterns but banks have the means, motive and opportunity to manipulate the fixing. The results are consistent with the possibility of collusion.”
And the punchline:
Large price moves during the afternoon call were also overwhelmingly in the same direction: down. On days when the authors identified large price moves during the fix, they were downwards at least two-thirds of the time in six different years between 2004 and 2013. In 2010, large moves during the fix were negative 92 percent of the time, the authors found.
Unpossible - the bank prop traders manipulating gold and the central banks for whom precious metals are the holy water that can destroy their fractional reserve ponzi scheme would never lie. Because otherwise the historic silver slam from May 1, 2011, in which silver cratered by $6, or about 15%, in milliseconds and ended the parabolic rise higher in the metal could be... gasp... criminal.
In other news, we may have officially run out of conspiracy theories.
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Oh, I get it Franky, so if something that should've rose let's say 10, 20 or 30 times to reflect the impact of real inflation and the other ways the value of fiat paper has declined only went up 5X, it's manipulation. Well sure it is! How else did it only achieve a fraction of the gain it should've seen?
NOBODY can say what it should be, what the degree of manipulation is. What it should be *is* what it would be in a free market with proper application of Law to embezzlers and racketeers. We do not have such a society, and there is no parallel, so we can only say for sure that it is *too* low.
sexual harassment of gold is like that of women in the armed forces.
You never get a raise until you make your boss's tail spin into ethereal levitation.
The funny thingie is that its a woman who is key inquisitor in administering the poisoned question waterboarding the golden "whore" that the gold bugs adore :
"Why aren't you more like the tress of timoshenko, ready to hang anyone who wants you to rejoice. Instead of dreaming of being the goody goldilocks of their freedom fries sighs?"
Luckily Lady Blythe is there to see that Goldilocks never leaves the straight and narrow and duly uses her tresses to hang the gold bugs to their hook with a garrot.
How much peyote do I need to hop on this ride?
In other news, we may have officially run out of conspiracy theories.
Uh-oh, does that mean ZH will close doors?
I hope not!!
"Trashing Saudi Cutouts:
Ransacking their Gold"
They spread debt slavery while they disseminate phony money, with a firm grip maintained on the monetary printing press that bears the Weimar nameplate. Their methods have not changed in 70 years.
They steal national wealth, with a focus on accumulated vaults of Gold bullion. Their signatures are in Czechoslavakia, Libya, Germany, and now Saudi Arabia as per gold.
They tell the public in their widely promulgated propaganda that Gold has no value, no place as money, no role as bank reserves, and no yield offered. Yet the bankers steal Gold at every opportunity, even from their longstanding allies.
When the United States finds itself descended into the De-Industrialized Third World with new masters at the helm, the citizens will wish they owned Gold & Silver, since their entire paper savings will have blown away during the storm.
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldenJackass/1393621200.php
The gold owned by defenders of the Petro-Dollar is being seized, confiscated, pilfered, and stolen for the unspoken purpose of continuing the fiat paper currency regime with the tainted debauched USDollar at the center.
The Saudi gold in London will be totally gone in a few more months. To be sure, it is going mostly to China.
The Saudis are being gutted.
They will likely be on the run soon, their gold bars cut loose.
They might be hunted.
This may be true but Willie is well known as a generator unverified rumors.
Please slam lower some more.
Folks who ask for more criminal slamming always assume that when they need their gold or silver for some emergency, the slamming will have stopped by then. The skies will magically open up on their behalf.
It's not magic when you use math. I did it, got all the gold prices 2010 to 2012, small 3 month window in the middle (post-peak) when I had a hard time nailing it down (youtube ytgv3fc7).
It is. It's the housing credit bubble.
It's not a simple machine where you slam a lever & something happens. Every movement of one lever causes all the others to move at the same time.
To use the machine, the central banking co-operative / cartel, you need to push all the levers to the ideal positions & watch the output. Those levers will push each other back & forth with feedback.
In the end for 2001 to 2011 a generally rising gold price in fiat dollars was a least-harm most-benefit outcome, not desired but alternatives less desired, to get the markets for housing, equities & bonds to sit where they appear less damaged.
That's why those of us who are ready know the time cycle & the pushback, the feedback, is going to push the gold price very high very soon. The credit-print lever's already been slammed & now the feedback from that action is next. ONE of the feedbacks is a rising gold price, war is another, as we're seeing now with Japan, China, Russia, USA & we should expect more soon.
It's large scale of co-operation, just before huge price drops of last year, NUGT did two reverse-split 5-1 and 10-1, forced odds shares had to sell on the open market, further pushed down gold prices.
then be warned & wary: any time enough people appear to be holding odd-lots in a theoretical future reverse-split you should count on a repeat strictly for that reason.
There's zero reason for banks to manipulate the price of gold downward. Zero.
I've noted a 100% correlation between those who use the term "stacking physical" and unemployment, envious and all around pathetic slobs.
Hmmm.....
You're akin to a ballpark of sore losers unable to accept your favorite baseball team's elimination- 6 weeks after the game ended.
Move on losers.
You need to get out more into the real world.
Bold insults with zero evidence = shill.
I stacked whily being employed, about 3kg of silver a month, so for me, and I guess most here, employment => stacking, and unemployment => unstacking.
The first and most obvious reason to manipulate the price of gold is to stop people saving in gold instead of these schemes that promise an interest. How was it the West's economy was growing at 1% while various investment vehicles would promise 5-10% per annum. The answer is because they were backed up by debt. That 5-10% came by creating debt instruments. Anything above 1% is and was a Ponzi.
Epic fail on your part. If the gold price is not manipulated downward the dollar will be ended as a currency in less than 24 hours.
I am participating in a manipulated market on the wrong side.... and somehow someday I will win. But till then I'm mad as hell
Geeze
Fiat paper eventually reverts to its intrinsic value. A long history of stock certificates becoming worthless exists in the world and bonds (even of sovereigns) share this history. If you participate in the metal markets through futures you are still trading paper promises of dubious credibility based on the idea of profiting in fiat paper.
Central bankers (their controllers actually) still have the power to set the price of every asset class as long as a sufficient number of players are willing to play by their rules and measure success in terms of fiat paper electronically accumulated.
Central bankers cannot, however, turn the gold and silver you hold in your hand into lead. I'm not even sure the world has enough trees and cotton to create the paper to print an actual bill (in hundred dollar or less denominations) to represent the fiat currency that has been created electronically. And, there is absolutely no way the real assets exist to redeem these paper and electronic promises at current prices.
Patience and fortitude will be required, but, yes, you will win.
When all the LMBA and a few BIS guys start jumping of roofs. ..you know their masters have decided to sacrifice them for some other game.
All their heads on pikes would be nice. .
"Sound Money" indeed.
If memory serves, MF Global under the direction of Corzine jacked the Silver futures margin 180% when the New Zealand market opened Monday May 2, 2011 (just after bin Laden entered Hell). This move should be a trading rule violation per the CFTC. There was no immediate change in the risk profile of Silver. There is no justification to rise the margin 180% in one trading day. If there are limits on price move, there should be limits on margin moves. In my opinion, rising the margin forced margin calls and a great deal of selling. The Main Core database at the NSA should be put to good use and queried for who contacted Corzine and roll up this criminal cabal. What percentage (or volume) of the selling of Silver futures in MF Global accounts were margin calls that day, May 2? Did they reverse engineer the amount of selling pressure needed, even using a SPAN calculation on each account if needed, and set the margin level based on what they needed to move the market? They would have had the data. They could have easily counted the number of contracts and how many accounts had these contracts and what margin level increase would be needed to trigger margin calls.
The analyst who wrote this query on the data, should come back into contact with his conscience, get immunity, and help restart the investigation to put Corzine away.
Solve your problem easy: do the math for inverse & bullish ETFs and stop using margins & futures.
Some sucker has to use them but we don't have to be those suckers if we use math.
When they talk about manipulation, how come they never mention the late night, thinly traded periods where the smack-downs happen with regularity? Still, not a word about silver.
Oh well, I guess that I should just be happy that Chris Powell and GATA are starting to be vindicated. Maybe he can retire his tin-foil hat soon.
Running out of conspriacy theories? Hardly! Nobody has even touched upon the State Dept and CIA yet, and the massive amount of deaths they are responsible for around the world. I don't think that this is what Madison, Adams, Jefferson and Washington had in mind when they started this country.
Of course, nothing happening today is what they intended.
16:9 monitor: I think not. Firefox has a webdeveloper toolkit. ctrol+shift+i
find the right sidebar #div and delete node
same for the left
then go through the stylesheet editor & find #3 and #4
set the margins for 1 px or -1px as is already shown as +350 or -350 or -180px and so on.
Voila. Now you can happily zoom in & out, see your Banzai7's and sidebars are GONE, middle is not squeezed.
Why is a mystery to any investor that a private for profit business who's business is the of printing money with government sanction would view precious metals as anything but the sworn enemy?
How does it NOT make perfect sense that said entity would not type in a 1 followed by a gaggle of zeros press Enter and presto! A fully finded trading account with which to beat down the enemy?
What seems to be missing in Post Republic America is the ability to see the obvious, and analyze it critically.