Ed Steer has written and spoken extensively about silver market manipulation, and at the recent International Mining Investment Conference he shared an update on what’s happening right now.
Steer, who runs Gold and Silver Digest and is a GATA board member, explained that not much has changed since his last interview with the Investing News Network (INN) in January.
“JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) is still running the COMEX futures market in the precious metals, silver in particular, and Scotiabank, which was always a big player up until then, has died off to nothing,” he said.
According to Steer, investors won’t see the silver price move higher until JPMorgan allows it to do so. While that may sound bleak, there is still hope – he believes that a major market event will push JPMorgan’s hand, and he sees that event happening in the near future.
“This event is close, if not imminent,” he said. “I don’t want to put a tight date on it, I’d be foolish to put a date on it, but I can tell you right now that I’m pretty sure it’ll be this year, and probably before summer’s over. That’s my guess, but don’t hold me to it.”
Watch the interview above for more insight on silver from Steer. The transcript is available below.
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INN: We’re catching up right now, we last spoke in January. Can you give me a quick update on what’s happened to the silver market since then?
ES: Since January. Well, I’ll tell you right now not much has changed. JPMorgan is still running the COMEX futures market in the precious metals, silver in particular, and Scotiabank, which was always a big player up until then, has died off to nothing because they ended up losing a whole bunch of money. Now they’re trying to get out of the silver and gold business.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) looked at them and said, “thank you, but no thanks, you’re a guaranteed 100-percent loss if we buy you,” so now Scotiabank is stuck with them. Other than that, JPMorgan still controls the field in the precious metals, so in that respect nothing has changed.
INN: A quick recap for those who don’t know about these names and these players. What is going on with silver market manipulation?
ES: Commodity prices are controlled. The big six commodities are controlled by basically eight traders, with JPMorgan being the lead trader. As long as you control the price of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper and crude oil, you can control, with some exceptions obviously, control the entire commodities complex. And that prevents people from seeing the fact that inflation is going on and they stay invested in Wall Street and things like that.
They’ve been doing this now for a couple of generations, since we went off the gold standard in 1971, and that’s their job. But I can tell you right now to put a little optimism into this, I think this price management scheme is really getting a little long in the tooth, and the signs are out there that this thing at some point, whether it be this week, next week, next month, is going to come to an end.
INN