The End of Markets, Part II

June 27, 2017

Part I of this series presented readers with a grim reality: we no longer have markets. The trading exchanges which masquerade as markets fall far short of being legitimate markets, in many key respects.

The precise means by which our once-legitimate markets have been destroyed is a topic which will be fully explained over the next, two installments. For now, it will suffice to say that we can easily prove that we no longer have markets.

All legitimate markets produce price discovery: the equilibrium point between buyers and sellers where supply meets demand. Our corrupted pseudo-markets no longer produce price discovery. The best example of this is the silver market.

There has been no price discovery in the silver market for at least 30 years . For at least the last three decades, the silver market has been in a permanent supply deficit. This is not even supposed to be possible. Thirty consecutive years of this market never once coming into balance (i.e. proper price discovery).

Why not?

Regular readers and astute investors can answer that question: price manipulation . The extreme/permanent manipulation of the silver market now traces back roughly 100 years, well-documented in Charles Savoie’s unique chronology , The Silver Stealers.

The ruling oligarchs of that era (the One Bank ) didn’t merely want to attack the silver market. They wanted to destroy it. They hatched a diabolical plan. They ordered their lackeys who ruled (what was at that time) the British Empire to loot all of the silver from India following the conclusion of World War I.

Indian troops would only agree to fight for the British if paid in silver (i.e. real money). Thus by the end of WW I, a large portion of the world’s stockpile of silver had been funneled into India. The oligarchs ordered that silver to be confiscated (stolen).

Once the British government had control of this stockpile, it was ordered to dump much of that silver onto the global market. This occurred in 1924, causing the price of silver to take a nose-dive. At that time, China’s economy was on a silver monetary system. When the oligarchs dumped vast quantities of silver onto the market and caused the price of silver to plummet, this wrecked China’s economy.

Thus in the mid-1920’s we had the oligarchs first loot India’s economy and then crash China’s economy: the economies of the world’s two most-populous nations. As Savoie observes in The Silver Stealers, this was the real cause of The Great Depression: simultaneously torpedoing two of the world’s largest economies.

The fact that the Great Depression didn’t hit the West until the end of the 1920’s was merely a reflection of the much slower pace of economic events at that time in history. The idea that a stock market crash in a market in which only a tiny number of people were invested could cause a global economic depression is a nice fairy-tale – but with no substance in reality.

This was part of a much larger (and more fiendish) plan to discredit silver as a precious metal, and thus devalue it in the mind of the average person. To do this, the oligarchs invented a propaganda strategy.

As our economies industrialized, the value of silver in numerous economic applications became quickly apparent. In both chemical and metallurgical terms, silver is humanity’s most-versatile metal.

It was (and is) still used as money. It was (and is) still used in jewelry, where silver is actually a more brilliant metal than gold. Now it was also being used in a plethora of industries. In other words, silver had become even more precious. Its price/value should have risen.

But not according to the propaganda which the oligarchs instructed their toads in the Corporate media to produce. According to these uninformed mouthpieces, silver was now merely “an industrial metal”. In the perverse realm of anti-silver propaganda, the fact that silver was even more useful supposedly made it less valuable.

It never made any sense. It never needed to. The oligarchs never intended to suppress the price of silver with lies alone. They also had the bankers.

The silver market has (by far) the largest short position of any market on the planet. The bankers claim they need this gigantic short position to “hedge” the price of silver.

In proportionate terms, the short position in the silver market is roughly 5000% larger than the short position in our ultra-volatile crude oil market. There is no possible (legitimate) explanation for this discrepancy.

Making this gigantic short position even more obviously criminal, roughly ¾ of this short position is permanently maintained by just four Big Banks. That is clearly illegal.

In 1980; the Hunt Brothers were charged and convicted with “cornering the silver market” (on the long side). At the time of their conviction they controlled less than 20% of existing inventories.

With the criminalized short position in the silver market, we have four “Hunt Brothers”: four Big Banks which are permanently allowed to operate and maintain totally illegal short positions in the silver market.

Making this obvious crime even more outrageous, this short position came into existence with the price of silver at a 600-year low. The criminal Big Banks claim their gigantic/illegal short position represents “hedging”.

The question: with the price of silver still near its 600-year low (in real dollars) what are they hedging against? A 700-year low? Maybe another new-and-incredibly valuable use for silver will be devised and so its price will go down again?

Legitimate regulators could not possibly fail to see the obvious, systemic criminality in this market. We have no legitimate regulators. The pseudo-regulator of the silver market is the infamous Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The CFTC claimed to “probe” this ultra-criminalized market, for five full years. Its findings? Not the slightest indication of any wrongdoing. See-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil. Perfect corruption .

Four Big Banks permanently operate illegal short positions which cannot possibly have the slightest market justification. This leads to the silver/gold price ratio. Silver and gold occur naturally in the Earth’s crust at a ratio of approximately 17:1. For over 4,000 years; the price ratio reflected this supply ratio – averaging 15:1.

Today, silver is more valuable than ever. With the destruction of silver stockpiles, the above-ground supply ratio of silver to gold is no more than 6:1 (most commentators believe it is much lower). Yet the current price ratio is approximately 75:1. Absolutely perverse. Absolutely criminal.

Much of this is already familiar to regular readers. Today, however, the One Bank is no longer interested in perverting (and thus destroying) merely some of our markets. It wants to pervert, destroy, and subvert all of our markets.

Its tool for this ultimate financial evil – in the 21^st century? Technology. Specifically, it uses automated trading algorithms, so called “HFT trading”. Just as the One Bank’s financial crimes in the silver market could not possibly be more obvious, its systemic crimes using these computer programs are equally obvious.

What is an algorithm? It is a relatively simple computer program which processes data and kicks out a result: in this case, market prices. Here is where the obvious crime enters the picture.

If you control the data that enters the algorithm you control the result . If you control the data entering these market-operating algorithms, you control the prices in all markets. The One Bank controls all data.

It controls our puppet governments. It instructs them on how to manipulate all of their woefully fraudulent economic statistics in order to feed the market manipulation of the One Bank’s Master Trading Algorithm .

It controls the Corporate media. The mainsteam media is just one of the One Bank’s many tentacles, part of the 40% of the global economy under its control. This mouthpiece reinforces the fraud/lies produced by our governments and bolsters the Master Trading Algorithm.

For many readers, this will seem too fantastic to believe: a single entity manipulating all of our (pretend) “markets” simultaneously. This leads back to a statement from the beginning of Part I.

What is a market? There are a number of ingredients in any definition. However, first and foremost, a market is a forum for human commerce – person-to-person buying/selling of merchandise and services. By this definition alone, we clearly no longer have markets, on any national or international scale. [emphasis mine]

Humans trading with humans. This is one of the most fundamental components in any definition of a market. We no longer have humans trading with humans. In our criminalized pseudo-markets, roughly 75% of all trading is now algorithm trading. It’s not humans trading with humans. It is computers trading with computers – and the computers are all processing the same propaganda (data) manufactured by the One Bank.

What is one of the most elementary clichés of computer technology? Garbage in; garbage out. The One Bank feeds its perverted lies into its Master Trading Algorithm, and this is how the vast majority of all trading is conducted.

That’s not a market. What the lying bankers, puppet politicians, and mindless media mouthpieces call “markets” no longer have the slightest resemblance to real markets. What we have instead is a 24/7 computerized price-rigging operation.

This Master Trading Algorithm manipulates our commodity markets. It manipulates our stock markets. It manipulates our currency markets. It manipulates our debt markets. Or, at least, what we used to call “markets”.

Everything is rigged.

That sounds like the accusation of some delusional conspiracy nut. Until we discover it is all true.

Some readers will still not be convinced that we no longer have markets and that “everything is rigged”. That leads to Part III: the evidence.

Jeff Nielson is co-founder and managing partner of Bullion Bulls Canada; a website which provides precious metals commentary, economic analysis, and mining information to readers and investors. Jeff originally came to the precious metals sector as an investor around the middle of last decade, but with a background in economics and law, he soon decided this was where he wanted to make the focus of his career. His website is www.bullionbullscanada.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this material are those of the author as of the publication date, are subject to change and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of Sprott Money Ltd. Sprott Money does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, timeliness and reliability of the information or any results from its use.