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Gold Fix Study Shows Signs of Decade of Bank Manipulation


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2014 Mar 2, 11:12am   1,381 views  8 comments

by turtledove   ➕follow (11)   💰tip   ignore  

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.

Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University’s Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper.

“The structure of the benchmark is certainly conducive to collusion and manipulation, and the empirical data are consistent with price artificiality,” they say in the report, which hasn’t yet been submitted for publication. “It is likely that co-operation between participants may be occurring.”

The paper is the first to raise the possibility that the five banks overseeing the century-old rate -- Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and Societe Generale SA (GLE) -- may have been actively working together to manipulate the benchmark. It also adds to pressure on the firms to overhaul the way the rate is calculated. Authorities around the world, already investigating the manipulation of benchmarks from interest rates to foreign exchange, are examining the $20 trillion gold market for signs of wrongdoing.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-28/gold-fix-study-shows-signs-of-decade-of-bank-manipulation.html

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1   New Renter   2014 Mar 2, 11:35am  

Are you really surprised?

2   turtledove   2014 Mar 2, 11:55am  

New Renter says

Are you really surprised?

I think if we really knew all the shite that goes on in the financial world, as well as the prerequisite world-wide government enabling, we'd be seeing riots "from sea to shining sea...."

3   New Renter   2014 Mar 2, 12:16pm  

turtledove says

New Renter says

Are you really surprised?

I think if we really knew all the shite that goes on in the financial world, and well as the prerequisite world-wide government enabling, we'd be seeing riots "from sea to shining sea...."

There were riots if you remember or at least protests:

How'd that work out?

4   turtledove   2014 Mar 2, 12:30pm  

New Renter says

There were riots if you remember or at least protests:

These were nothing. And they formed due to slivers of real information. If OWS started based on the paltry information they had, I think it would be worse if there were ever full disclosure of all the shenanigans occurring among the corpolitical sovereignty. Every day, something else comes to the surface.

5   HydroCabron   2014 Mar 2, 12:33pm  

As a veteran of 15 years of reading about precious-metals market manipulation, I can assure you that such markets are indeed full of shenanigans.

The problem is that the writers who affect to understand the nature of the manipulation have demonstrated no predictive acumen: during the years they whined about gold prices being suppressed, it sextupled in value.

Assume the market is dirty, rigged. Then buy according to your long-term beliefs and hold, hold, hold.

6   AD   2014 Mar 2, 1:05pm  

Gold was $400 per ounce 30 years ago. It is $1341 per ounce today. Hence, its price grew about 4% annually over those 30 years. Compared to the S&P 500, gold is a poor performer.

Just judging by that, one could reasonably believe that gold is being manipulated so that it does not compete for investing dollars with the S&P 500 index mutual funds.

7   New Renter   2014 Mar 3, 12:27am  

turtledove says

New Renter says

There were riots if you remember or at least protests:

These were nothing. And they formed due to slivers of real information. If OWS started based on the paltry information they had, I think it would be worse if there were ever full disclosure of all the shenanigans occurring among the corpolitical sovereignty. Every day, something else comes to the surface.

These were nothing because they were downplayed as nothing and quickly devolved into a side show, then thuggery; however it seemed to me at the time the one thing these guys DID to right was to start a movement to take deposits out of major banks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/04/bank-transfer-day-occupy-wall-street_n_1077088.html

To me that seemed to coincide with the perception by the powers that be that OWS could be an actual threat. The conspiricist in me wonders if the thuggery wasn't orchestrated by said powers as a way to discredit the movement before they could do some real damage.

8   turtledove   2014 Mar 3, 2:38am  

New Renter says

it seemed to me at the time the one thing these guys DID to right was to start a movement to take deposits out of major banks.

I did.

New Renter says

The conspiricist in me wonders if the thuggery wasn't orchestrated by said powers as a way to discredit the movement before they could do some real damage.

And that's part of my point about what would happen if we really knew what was going on. Assuming first that you have the capacity to fully understand all implications.... Imagine sitting down with a person who knew it all. And this person could tell you exactly what's up with the economy, who's manipulating what, who's stealing what, who's wasting what.... And this person could tell you exactly which conspiracy theories are true.... and you could put away your tinfoil hat because now you know what's objectively true.

I tend to think that for every market manipulation we know about there are probably many more we don't (Libor wasn't all that long ago). Since one segment of the population is benefiting handsomely from it, at what point will people really get pissed off? (In a way much more widely identified than OWS.)

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