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Mike Gleason (Money Metals Exchange): It is my privilege now to welcome in Chris Powell, Secretary-Treasurer at the Gold Antitrust Action Committee, also known as GATA. Chris is a long-time journalist and hard money advocate, and through his tireless efforts at GATA, he is working to expose the manipulation of the gold and silver markets. Through GATA’s work over the years. Some important revelations have come to light, which quite honestly should concern everyone.

It’s great to have him back on with us. Chris, how are you, and thanks for taking the time to talk with us today.

Chris Powell (GATA): Great to be with you, Mike.

Mike Gleason: Well it’s been more than a year since the last time we had you on, and there actually are some developments finally in the whole precious metals manipulation realm, specifically Deutsche Bank coming under fire for rigging gold and silver markets. Talk about this Chris, bring us up to date here on the whole lawsuit, and then give us your thoughts on whether or not this is going to finally get us somewhere on ending the manipulation that has occurred in the precious metals markets for years, if not decades.

Chris Powell: Sure Mike. Deutsche Bank has essentially confessed to manipulating the gold and silver futures markets. It has offered to settle the antitrust lawsuits against it for manipulation for just a little less than $100 million. More importantly, I think the bank has volunteered to provide the antitrust lawsuit plaintiffs with evidence against other bullion banks that participated with the Deutsche Bank traders in the manipulation of the gold and silver markets. And that raises the possibility of all sorts of money that could be due in damages to at least gold and silver futures traders now.

Now unfortunately, the U.S. Justice Department is seeking to intervene in the antitrust case in New York to delay further discovery and deposition in the case, so that the government could undertake its own investigation of the rigging – which is pretty ironic since the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for years, was supposedly doing its own investigation of the silver market and kept saying they couldn’t find anything. Now, they want to hold up the civil lawsuit so they (the government) can investigate it. I don’t think that the government really wants to investigate the case at all, I think the U.S. government simply wants to delay any further disclosures that would come from discovery and deposition, because they know that eventually, the rigging investigation proceedings like these are going to lead to the U.S. government’s own participation.

But, anyway, there is now a formal admission by one major international bank, Deutsche Bank, that it helped rig the gold and silver markets, in collusion with other bullion banks. So, that degree of manipulation can’t be denied anymore. The other day, I guess last month, a former Deutsche Bank trader was convicted of a criminal violation for rigging the gold and silver futures markets through what’s called “spoofing,” placing a lot of fake orders that were immediately withdrawn after causing other traders to position themselves in certain ways. So, there’s more and more evidence and more and more documentation of this rigging that’s coming out.

My organization is more interested in evidence of manipulation by governments in central banks, so we’re pretty convinced that the bullion banks that are involved in the instance of litigation were most likely functioning as agents of central banks, and making trades on the market that the central banks wanted to make in order to suppress prices controlled, prices. But the litigation has not yet gotten around to incriminating governments and central banks. We’re hoping that will happen eventually.

Mike Gleason: Yeah, certainly if nothing else, the latest developments here with the whole Deutsche Bank case have at least made it known that it’s no longer conspiracy theory, it’s conspiracy fact as we’ve been saying for a while now, and at least now everybody is aware of the fact that yes, the markets are actually being rigged.

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