Confiscation,
Manipulation
and the Wars Against Everyman
By Dr. Jeffrey Lewis
Confiscation —
both direct and indirect forms — and market manipulation tend to go hand in hand
when it comes to forecasting the silver market’s future.
Furthermore,
ongoing silver pricing issues include the overwhelming concentration of silver
shorts, as bullion banks act like producers and push paper prices lower without
ever being forced to deliver physical metal into a futures contract.
They try to keep
their activities out of the media spotlight, with their claims of being safely
hedged firmly entrenched in the minds of the mainstream investor.
Endless
Investigations and QE Extensions
The seemingly
endless CFTC investigation into silver market manipulation seems to be designed
to do nothing while appearing to do something about the increasingly obvious
covert market intervention.
In addition,
extending inflationary QE programs to infinity will have the long term effect of
destroying currency savings and dwindling precious metal supplies. This means
that there will be less and less physical silver available for future savers and
investors with each passing day as investment demand surges.
As the house of
fiat currency cards starts to fall and currency wars heat up, the eventual
response to manipulation or downward price control will be a dramatic upward
spike as silver prices return to fairer levels determined by supply and demand
factors.
Questionable
London Fixings and HFT Wash Trades
The CFTC is
already discussing internally whether the daily fixing of the gold and silver
price in London is open to manipulation.
Furthermore, The
Wall Street Journal reported last Sunday that the CFTC is also investigating
alleged wash trades by high-speed trading firms in future contracts tied to
precious metals, oil, agricultural products and the Standard & Poor’s 500.
An illegal wash
trade occurs when a concern executes a transaction against itself. This
phenomenon is not to be confused with a “wash sale" that occurs when an investor
sells a security at a loss but then purchases the same or a substantially
similar security within 30 days of the original sale, thereby invalidating the
tax deductibility of their loss.
Basically, more
and more silver buyers seem to be emerging at each price dip. The stronger hands
also increasingly seem to be the bullion banks themselves, who are reportedly
covering their own profitable short positions and going long.
The Cyprus
Crisis and the Dual Wars
Currency markets
were shocked earlier this week by the Cyprus banking event in Europe that
threatened confiscation of as much as ten percent of savings accounts held in
Cypriot banks in order to pay back some of the country’s increasing overwhelming
sovereign debt.
The consolidated
Euro currency gapped sharply downwards from last week’s 1.3074 close versus the
U.S. Dollar as trading opened for the week when the forex market had a chance to
react to the threat made over the weekend. The Euro managed to find support at
the 1.2842 level after the highly controversial proposal was unanimously
rejected by the Cypriot parliament.
It appears that
fears of confiscation may well be coming true as the dual wars on savings and
hard assets seem to be intensifying. Still, it seems worth asking oneself
cui bono or who benefits from these wars?
Certainly those
insidious wars do not benefit smaller savers and investors. Such people would
seem wise to diverge from the mainstream investment community that has been
deliberately lulled into a false sense of security by those who control the
media.
Instead of being
suckered into holding intrinsically worthless paper assets, a more intelligent
and well-informed response favors increasing one’s personal stockpile of
physical precious metals. This strategy has historically proven useful as a
means of preserving wealth through a widening financial crisis that simply
cannot be fixed with bailout Band-Aids.
For more
articles like this, and to stay updated on the most important economic,
financial, political and market events related to silver and precious metals,
visit
http://www.silver-coin-investor.com
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