There are mountains of evidence that investment banks and other participants have been price-fixing, hoarding, trading on non-public information,front-running, pumping and dumping pretty much every financial asset and market on the earth over the past several years. I have no doubt they have been up to the same antics in the gold market as well.
Trouble is most market participants have a long-side bias: they only complain about manipulation when the assets they hold drop in value. They never complain when asset prices surge in value courtesy of the exact same culprits and activities; and yet high price is the very essence of investment risk. When Gold was $1900 and silver near $50, one didn’t hear the precious metal chorus screaming about manipulation then. Oh no, at that point, after prices had soared 660% over 10 years, precious metals bugs were delighted to explain the rational reasons for all those gains and many more that they predicted. All very justified fundamentals according to them. But after prices plunged into the 1100’s in 2013, why then it was all about routing out the evil “manipulators” they alleged were causing the downside.
We are reminded of President Hoover’s call for investigation by the Senate into the short-sellers he admonished as having caused the crash of 1929, but with no similar inquiry requested about all the risk-sellers who pumped asset markets to financially suicidal levels leading up to the crash. Human behavior is nothing if not predictable…
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. Here is a direct video link.
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