Is This Patriotism? Is This How We Make America Great Again?
David’s Commentary (In Blue)
Backwoods Jack is back. A year ago Backwoods sold his mansion in the suburbs and moved into a bespoke apartment in an upscale neighborhood in south Minneapolis. His unit occupies the desirable southeast facing corner, up high, one floor beneath the penthouse. Ol’ Backwoods is used to “the best”. He is constantly reminding me that Trump will make America great again and he proudly sports his red MAGA Trump baseball hat in public. Personally, I think a baseball hat on an 84-year old looks inappropriate with or without a MAGA logo on the front. Recently I wrote that he is convinced that Trump will have his likeness sculpted on Mt. Rushmore. When he moved into his condo he mounted a LARGE American flag on a flag pole that he had installed on his balcony. All day and all night long it flaps in the wind. I mean its BIG and it makes a lot of noise. Now, his neighbors are irate because the flapping flag is making so much noise it keeps them up at night. There is a lot of wind when your balcony is on an upper floor, so it really is a problem. When they confront him on the elevator, and politely ask him to take it down, his replies are – well, let’s just say….I can’t print them. That’s a nice way to influence people and make friends.
Our true patriot, who has tunnel vision and will not tolerate any views different from his own, recently decided that HE HATES ALL LIBERALS. He says he and his wife will not be in the same room with them. He tells me this, knowing that my daughter and her two girls are all liberals. He’s really not very smart. He mocks all people of color and gays. Really, I am not making this up. His most recent email to me reads as follows:
“Creepy Joe and Pocahontas are dead. Sorry not to see Trump eat them alive in 2020. He will feast on Bernie and Beto. Regarding Klobuchar (he misspelled her name), we are not ready for a fat, dumpy, ugly Jewish female POTUS from St. Louis Park MN. (He got the Jewish part wrong too, but when you’re Backwoods Jack, details don’t matter).
Of course he is all-in on Trump’s border wall. No more immigrants! I wonder if he ever stops to think about the open borders that allowed his Swedish ancestors to move to Minnesota?
Backwoods’ idea of what a Great America is – well, it’s very different than mine. A MAGA red hat and a large American flag do not make one a patriot. I’ve known Backwoods for 17 years, but it is only in the last few years that he showed his true colors. If you want to see real patriotism in action, watch Lynyrd Skynyrd sing Red White and Blue. I hope you take the time to watch this video. Now this is real southern patriotism.
There are a lot of Backwoods Jacks out there. In their eyes, if you are not a conservative Republican WASP then you don’t count. This mindset sort of parallels Germany in the 1930s, where you better be a blond, blue-eyed Protestant Arian. Hitler wanted to make Germany great again too.
But this is only one side of the problem, albeit an extreme one. On the other side, the liberal side, you have the views of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maxine Waters. (There are many more, but they are the equivalent of Backwoods.) They want America to be the land of opportunity – but only for the poor and people of color. If you are white, rich and successful you are their target. Backwoods, you better keep your guns locked and loaded. By the way, he sits at the back row of his church on Sundays and has his loaded gun tucked into his belt just waiting for trouble. Really, he does. Fortunately these extremists are in the minority. A majority of Americans are more open minded. But the trouble is, all it takes is a well-organized and vocal minority to wrest control. In post-WW1 Germany, a small minority, the NSDAP (NAZIS) took over the government.
I talk about Backwoods because he really is just like your rather normal next-door neighbor. You never know how normal someone is until you start talking politics.
Politically speaking, half the people in America are liberal and half are conservative. Fortunately, not all the Liberals or Conservatives are this extreme (thank God). But the Backwoods and the likes of Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez’s of the world are gaining in numbers. Doesn’t it disturb you that people like AOC and Maxine Waters can get elected into office? What does that say about the people who vote them in? It says that they are fed up with the establishment and they want a bigger piece of the pie – the piece that is on YOUR dinner table.
This is all about the haves and the have-nots. If you happen to be one of the unfortunates living on the street, or someone who is barely getting by on minimum wage, it’s only natural that you will be envious of those who have found a way to succeed. If you are in the upper-middle class with a little money in the bank and a decent job you probably should feel threatened by those who want to raise taxes and take what’s yours. Backwoods Jack doesn’t feel threatened. He just likes to feel superior. The best way to deal with people is to find a way to lift their standard of living, to provide them with decent jobs that put food on their table and give them a sense of self-respect.
I would like to believe that a majority of Americans are decent people who are not prejudice and do care. If you haven’t seen the movie Same Kind Of Different As Me, then by all means, make it a point to see it.
A recent interview with former CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton nearly knocked me off my feet because it confirmed what I have alleged, starting more than 12 years ago. I’ll include the interview later, but first I will set the background of the subject and timeline in order put Chilton’s words into the proper perspective. The subject is JPMorgan’s manipulation of the silver market. The timeline is important because Chilton does misstate some facts that need to be corrected. I’m not a big fan of articles that include lots of links to past articles, but in this case it’s unavoidable.
Shortly after Bart Chilton took office as a commissioner in August 2007, he began to make public speeches in which he asserted that the CFTC was no regulatory pushover, like Barney Fife on the “Andy Griffith Show” but more like Elliot Ness or James Bond and that the agency was a tough cop on the beat. I assumed Chilton was genuine in his faith in the agency, but since he was brand new to commodity regulation I was sure that he was unaware of my allegations to the agency over the prior 20 years about a silver manipulation due to a concentrated short position on the COMEX. So I wrote to him about his claims of regulatory toughness at the agency and encouraged others to do so as well.
To his credit, Commissioner Chilton, responded to my and others’ e-mails quickly, pointing out that CFTC staff were aware of the allegations and having responded in the past, they would do so again in the future.
I would ask you to note that my first contacts with Commissioner Chilton took place shortly after he assumed office in 2007 and the subject matter revolved around the concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures, an issue that has remained at the heart of the allegations of price manipulation to this day.
This absolute must read commentary by Ted, which confirms everything that Ted has said about JPMorgan and the CFTC…plus more
Theodore Butler
Confirmation, Outrage and Disgust
A recent interview with former CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton nearly knocked me off my feet because it confirmed what I have alleged, starting more than 12 years ago. I’ll include the interview later, but first I will set the background of the subject and timeline in order put Chilton’s words into the proper perspective. The subject is JPMorgan’s manipulation of the silver market. The timeline is important because Chilton does misstate some facts that need to be corrected. I’m not a big fan of articles that include lots of links to past articles, but in this case it’s unavoidable.
Shortly after Bart Chilton took office as a commissioner in August 2007, he began to make public speeches in which he asserted that the CFTC was no regulatory pushover, like Barney Fife on the “Andy Griffith Show” but more like Elliot Ness or James Bond and that the agency was a tough cop on the beat. I assumed Chilton was genuine in his faith in the agency, but since he was brand new to commodity regulation I was sure that he was unaware of my allegations to the agency over the prior 20 years about a silver manipulation due to a concentrated short position on the COMEX. So I wrote to him about his claims of regulatory toughness at the agency and encouraged others to do so as well.
To his credit, Commissioner Chilton, responded to my and others’ emails quickly, pointing out that CFTC staff were aware of the allegations and having responded in the past, they would do so again in the future.
I would ask you to note that my first contacts with Commissioner Chilton took place shortly after he assumed office in 2007 and the subject matter revolved around the concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures, an issue that has remained at the heart of the allegations of price manipulation to this day.
Much to his credit, Chilton always endeavored to answer each and every email sent to him from the public (provided those emails weren’t personally insulting). In fact, I continued to email him personally and encouraged others to do so as well, in addition to sending him and the other commissioners all articles I wrote. I think it’s fair to say that close to 99% of the thousands of public emails sent to Chilton concerned the silver and gold price manipulation and there can be little doubt that all of those emails came directly or indirectly at my urging. What else could possible account for the high volume of public correspondence with an official of the CFTC?
Early in 2008, Commissioner Chilton indicated to me privately that the agency would be coming out with a new finding concerning the continued numerous public allegations of a silver price manipulation. This new finding would supersede the 15 page public letter of 2004. Perhaps I misinterpreted his message, but I came to believe that the new finding would be much different than the original finding. Instead, on May 13, 2008, the CFTC published another 16-page denial that anything was wrong with the concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures.
Feeling betrayed (something I don’t believe I revealed previously), I told Chilton in not-so-polite terms how I felt and ceased personal email contact with him (although I did continue to send my articles to him and all the other commissioners, since they concerned regulatory matters).
In March 2008, nearly two months before the CFTC’s 2nd public silver letter was published, the largest concentrated COMEX silver (and gold) short, Bear Stearns, failed and its short positions were assumed by JPMorgan. I certainly knew that Bear Stearns collapsed and was taken over by JPMorgan, but I had no idea at the time that Bear was the biggest single short in COMEX silver and gold or that JPMorgan assumed those short positions. I would only learn of this months later, after the August 2008 Bank Participation Report was issued and revealed for the very first time an enormous silver and gold short position held, as it turned out, by a single US bank. (The reason Bear Stearns had never appeared in the Bank Participation Report was because it was an investment, not a commercial bank like JPMorgan).
Importantly, as a result of this article and others, which encouraged readers to again petition the CFTC, the agency confirmed it had initiated a formal investigation by its Enforcement Division – I believe primarily due to Chilton’s initiative (although for some reason, Chilton claims in his interview that the investigation started in 2010, at the prodding by Andrew Maguire). Fortunately the record of the timeline is clear, although the original confirmation was buried in an overall press release on Oct 2, 2008 –
The termination of the investigation was more fully announced five years later –
Within months of the August 2008 Bank Participation report, I had deduced that JPMorgan was the big COMEX silver and gold short and began publicly referring to the bank as the big silver and gold crook and price manipulator (albeit with more trepidation initially than as time passed). Please know that all my deductions and allegations came from studying public data and official correspondence from the CFTC to lawmakers, as many readers wrote to their elected officials about what had transpired. I never talked with anyone at the CFTC about any of this – to them, I was always persona non grata.
But in the fall of 2008 when I came to figure out that JPMorgan had been running the silver and gold manipulation since March of that year, it also dawned on me that there could be no way that the CFTC wasn’t fully aware that Bear Stearns was in deep trouble with its COMEX silver and gold short positions before the JPM takeover, since prices of each rose substantially from yearend 2007 to the day in March when JPM took over the short positions. Bear Stearns would have needed to have come up with more than a billion dollars in cash for margin calls, money it simply didn’t have.
Since the CFTC would have had to have known of Bear’s plight and of JPMorgan taking over its silver and gold short positions, it also became obvious to me that the CFTC had lied through its teeth when it failed to mention in its public letter of May 2008 that the biggest concentrated silver and gold short seller failed and needed to be taken over by JPMorgan. After all, the subject of the public letter was concentration on the short side of silver, so there was no way the Bear Stearns’ failure could have been innocently overlooked. I said so in a subsequent public article, even writing to the CFTC’s Inspector General about it –
OK, that’s the background and timeline, so why am I walking you down memory lane today? It seems that Bart Chilton, whose tenure as a commissioner at the CFTC ended in early 2014, has chosen to speak out on the silver manipulation and his and the agency’s role at the time. This is the very first time that an insider has confirmed virtually everything I’ve alleged about JPMorgan. In fact, Chilton goes beyond just confirming what I’ve alleged, he paints a picture of deep concern behind the scenes, as the CFTC struggled to get JPMorgan’s silver short position reduced – to no avail. Here is the interview with Chris Marcus of Arcadia Economics –
Since the interview is about 42 minutes long, please allow me to highlight what I believe are the key points.
At the 3:30 minute mark, Chilton acknowledges that he first learned of the allegations of a silver manipulation from me, but then goes on to say he asked for an Enforcement Division investigation only after Andrew Maguire contacted him in 2010, which as I indicated is contrary to the verified record which indicated the investigation began in September 2008.
At the 11:40 minute mark and continuing to the 18:30 mark, it gets interesting. This is where Chilton acknowledges publicly for the first time that JPMorgan took over Bear Stearns’ silver short position and goes on to explain how the CFTC had to approve the resultant excessively large combined short position and did so on a temporary basis of no more than a few months and how JPMorgan didn’t abide by the CFTC’s waiver. He also points out how the head silver trader for Bear Stearns also went over to JPM and continue to trade the position there. Chilton states that he was shocked about how large the JPMorgan silver short position grew to and implies it was eventually worked down. Perhaps JPM’s silver short position was worked down temporarily as it rigged prices lower, but as regular readers know, JPM has continued to add shorts and buy back on lower prices to this day, a decade later.
At the 20:20 mark, Chilton acknowledges the agency had plenty of evidence of manipulation, but not enough to bring charges and asked for outside help in determining whether the evidence was enough to bring charges. Chilton claims he extended the investigation for another year and believed there was enough evidence to bring charges. It should be noted, even though I caused the investigation to be initiated in the first place, I was never contacted.
At the 36:40 mark, Chilton acknowledges for the first time that the Justice Department was involved in the five year silver investigation but dropped interest after the CFTC closed its investigation. He suggests the DOJ is understaffed. Also mentioned is that Chilton had perhaps a hundred separate meetings on the silver investigation back then, in addition to the dozens of official agency meetings on silver that the agency held. It’s remarkable with all that attention, JPMorgan was able to continue to manipulate silver prices to this day without missing a beat. And I distinctly remember all through this time, which Chilton described as full of high drama behind the scenes, not one word was offered publicly to warn anyone that there were strong official suspicions of manipulation. All I ever recall is that the CFTC found all my allegations of silver manipulation to be completely unfounded. Chilton seems to be saying something quite different in this interview.
What Chilton said confirmed just about everything I’ve written and for that I am grateful. Again, all my analysis has been based strictly on public data. While I’m happy for the confirmation, I’m also outraged and disgusted that the CFTC and DOJ failed to end the manipulation and that JPMorgan has continued on its merry and illegal way. I’ve reached the conclusion that JPMorgan is so well-connected and backed by such legal firepower that even the US Government, certainly in the form of the CFTC, but now also including the Justice Department, is no match for it. As a result, my expectations for the DOJ cracking down on JPM have been reduced to a faint hope, although it saddens me to admit to that.
That said, I do believe more than ever that it will be JPMorgan’s actions over the past decade that will power silver (and gold) higher. No one would acquire the massive amount of physical silver and gold that JPMorgan has accumulated without the expectation of a monster payday. Separately, Chilton’s confirmation that the CFTC (and DOJ) were investigating and pressuring JPM would seem to dispel any notion that it was or is the US Government behind the silver (and gold) manipulation. The CFTC and DOJ are US Government institutions, after all.
They may be no match for JPMorgan, but that’s a far cry from either being involved in some conspiracy to manipulate prices. Finally, the degree of alarm and concern by the regulators, according to Chilton, would seem to mock all the manipulation deniers who maintain there is nothing to see. According to Chilton, the regulars saw plenty to be concerned about.
Ted Butler
April 4, 2019
www.butlerresearch.com
