Ted Butler: Silver was smashed to ease Morgan's takeover of Bear

3:22p ET Monday, November 10, 2008

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Silver market analyst Ted Butler has obtained a letter from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to U.S. Rep. Gary G. Miller, Republican of California, that virtually confirms Butler's speculation in September that the smashing of the silver price this year involved JPMorganChase's takeover of Bear Stearns in March.

Butler writes:

"Bear Stearns held the largest concentrated short position in COMEX silver (and gold) futures at the time of its forced merger with JP Morgan in March. That position was not discovered until the publishing of the August Bank Participation Report followed by the October 8 letter from the CFTC to Congressman Miller. Furthermore, Bear Stearns had no legitimate backing to the short silver position, either in actual metal or cash. Otherwise it could have been delivered against or bought back, just as would have happened were it a long position.

"The price of silver at the time of Bear Stearns implosion was $20 to $21 an ounce. A free-market covering of a concentrated short position of this size would have driven silver prices to the $50 or $100 level and would have exposed the long-term manipulation. Rather than let the free market deal with the required short covering of such an uneconomic and unbacked short position, government authorities arranged to have the short position transferred to JP Morgan. This was undertaken by the U.S. Treasury Department, along with taxpayer guarantees against loss to Morgan worth billions of dollars. This was done, no doubt, to save the financial system from imploding. This was also patently illegal, as it aided and abetted the silver manipulation."

That is, it is now virtually certain that the big silver short (and the big gold short) is the U.S. government's New York bank, JPMorganChase.

Butler's new commentary is headlined "The Real Story" and you can find it at GoldSeek's companion site, SilverSeek, here:

http://news.silverseek.com/TedButler/1226344970.php

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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