CFTC refuses to address GATA's questions about gold and silver market rigging

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has refused to reply to or even to acknowledge GATA's questions about manipulation of the gold and silver futures markets that are purportedly regulated by the commission.

By letters in July and September, GATA asked the commission to explain the explosion in the use of the "exchange for physicals" mechanism of settling gold and silver futures contracts on the New York Commodity Exchange; to determine whether gold futures prices had been linked by the Chinese government's manipulative trading to the value of the yuan; and whether the commission has jurisdiction over manipulative futures trading by the U.S. government itself.

GATA's letters are posted here:

http://gata.org/node/18405

http://gata.org/node/18512

Having gone months without any acknowledgment from the commission, GATA asked your secretary/treasurer's U.S. representative, John B. Larson, Democrat of Connecticut's 1st District, to press the commission to reply, which his office did several times.

Today Larson's office forwarded a copy of a letter put into the mail to GATA yesterday by the commission's director of legislative affairs, N. Charles Thornton III. But Thorton's reply is little more than a form letter, outlining the commission's general objectives and purposes. Thornton makes no reference to GATA's questions:

http://gata.org/files/CFTCReply-12-12-2018.pdf

Ordinarily a response so vapid could be considered insulting, but it fairly may be taken as confirmation that the U.S. government and other governments are surreptitiously rigging commodity markets, as has been strongly suggested by the official filings of CME Group, operator of the New York Commodities Exchange and other commodities exchanges in the United States. These filings report that governments and central banks are among the exchange operator's clients and receive discounts from the exchanges for their secret trading of all commodity futures contracts:

http://www.gata.org/node/14385

http://www.gata.org/node/14411

GATA's correspondence with the CFTC shows how easy it is to demonstrate government instigation of or complicity with market manipulation. Since demonstrating this is so easy, the bigger challenge is to persuade mainstream financial news organizations to pursue the issue and to persuade commodity-producing companies and their investors to agitate against it.

You can help by bringing GATA's work to their attention and urging them to act.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/TreasurerGold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.CPowell@GATA.org* * *