Precious metals expert Michael Ballanger discusses the uptick in gold and silver miners and the Deutsche Bank gold bullion settlement.
One of the more striking developments in the bizarro world of gold and silver trading has to be yesterday’s settlement between Deutsche Bank and a class-action group that alleged that the bullion banks (DB, Scotia and HSBC) were manipulating the physical and Comex silver futures market since 2007; what is laughable and disgusting is the size of the settlement—$38 million. It’s like Lee Harvey Oswald being charged with “Assault with a Deadly Weapon” and winding up with a misdemeanor. Then again, it is really no different than Libor-rigging or the sub-prime mortgage fraud or more recently the Wells Fargo scam.
At the end of the day, if you had told me back in 1977 when I got first got hired by a old, venerable Bay Street investment firm (McLeod Young and Weir Limited) that multinational banks would be facing multibillion dollar fines for committing FRAUD and then being allowed to continue to do business, well, I would have laughed you out of the room. Furthermore, if an insignificant little retail salesman—also known as “registered representative” or “stockbroker” or “investment executive”—is caught taking client money or even recommending an “unsuitable investment,” he is offered up by his firm as a sacrificial lamb to be raped and pilloried in the Town Hall square and usually is fined far higher than he can afford (non-negotiable) and is usually banned from the industry. In fact, you can search far and wide over the past fifty years to find one senior executive of any financial services company that ever got fined or banned. Ex-Goldman CEO John Corzine stole a great deal of money from client accounts when MF Global went under and he is still living …read more