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State Dept. cable confirms gold futures market was created for price suppression
Submitted by cpowell on Wed, 2017-01-04 16:28. Section: Documentation
11:31a ET Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

The U.S. gold futures market appears to have been created in December 1974 as a result of collusion between the U.S. government and gold dealers in London to facilitate volatility in gold prices and thereby discourage gold ownership by U.S. citizens, according to a State Department cable written that month, obtained by Wikileaks, and disclosed today by the TF Metals Report:

http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/8075 ... serve-alch...

The cable was sent to the State Department from the U.S. embassy in London and signed by someone named Spiers, apparently Ronald I. Spiers, the embassy's deputy chief at that time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_I._Spiers

The cable describes the embassy's extensive consultations with London bullion dealers about the imminent re-legalization of gold ownership in the United States and possible substantial gold purchases by oil-exporting Arab nations.

The cable reads: "The major impact of private U.S. ownership, according to the dealers' expectations, will be the formation of a sizable gold futures market. Each of the dealers expressed the belief that the futures market would be of significant proportion and physical trading would be minuscule by comparison. Also expressed was the expectation that large-volume futures dealing would create a highly volatile market. In turn, the volatile price movements would diminish the initial demand for physical holding and most likely negate long-term hoarding by U.S. citizens."

The cable is interesting not just for confirming the assertions by GATA and others in the gold-price suppression camp that futures markets function largely as mechanisms of commodity price suppression and support for government currencies, an assertion perhaps first made comprehensively in 2001 by the British economist Peter Warburton --

http://www.gata.org/node/8303

-- but also for showing the close connection between the U.S. government and London gold dealers, some of which are cited by name, including Samuel Montagu & Co., Sharps Pixley & Co., Mocatta & Goldsmid, and Consolidated Gold Fields.

The cable is posted at the Wikileaks internet site here:

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974 ... 154_b.html

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org

BlackRock Gives 2 Funds Go-Ahead to Invest in Bitcoin Futures
The world's largest asset manager appears to be getting into the bitcoin game.

Danny Nelson

Jan 20, 2021 at 12:33 p.m. CST
Updated Jan 20, 2021 at 4:20 p.m. CST

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $7.81 trillion under management, appears to have granted at least two of its funds the ability to invest in bitcoin futures.

Prospectus documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday indicate that BlackRock Global Allocation Fund Inc. and BlackRock Funds V are at least eyeing bitcoin. They both include the world’s oldest cryptocurrency on their lists of derivative products cleared for use.

BlackRock did not state which commodity exchange it will choose to execute these crypto futures buys. However, the funds may only invest in cash-settled bitcoin futures. CME is the only exchange registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that offers similar futures products at this time.

Fed Hires BlackRock to Help Calm Markets. Its ETF Business Wins Big.

The central bank’s market intervention helped the largest U.S. provider of corporate bond exchange-traded funds get larger

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has helped the firm grow to $7.3 trillion in assets.

By Cezary Podkul and Dawn Lim

Sept. 18, 2020 1:31 pm ET

The Federal Reserve’s March commitment to deploy billions of dollars to prop up the economy was a boon for the company the Fed hired to help execute its plan: BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager.

In response to the pandemic-induced market collapse, the Fed promised to buy corporate bonds and exchange-traded funds that invest in collections of corporate debt.

The Fed had never bought ETFs or corporate bonds before. The central bank tapped BlackRock to help advise it and buy the bonds and funds on its behalf, though the central bank retained ultimate authority over what to purchase.

The Fed’s interventions worked as designed, stoking investor confidence and restoring market function—even before the central bank had bought anything at all. But one side effect was that many of the funds investors poured into were BlackRock’s own, making the giant firm an even bigger player in the exchange-traded-fund market.

In the days after the Fed’s announcement on March 23, traders jockeyed to figure out what funds the central bank might buy, and bought those funds themselves.

TO READ THE FULL STORY

Janet Yellen Will Consider Limiting the Use of Cryptocurrency

During her confirmation hearing, the Treasury nominee said that blockchain-based financial networks are “a particular concern.”

CRYPTOCURRENCIES COULD COME under renewed regulatory scrutiny over the next four years if Janet Yellen, Joe Biden's pick to lead the Treasury Department, gets her way. During Yellen's confirmation hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) asked Yellen about the use of cryptocurrency by terrorists and other criminals.

ARS TECHNICA

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast.

"Cryptocurrencies are a particular concern," Yellen responded. "I think many are used—at least in a transactions sense—mainly for illicit financing."

She said she wanted to "examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that [money laundering] doesn't occur through those channels."

Blockchain-based financial networks are attractive to criminals because they do not require users to identify themselves—as the law requires most conventional financial networks to do. Because no individual or organization controls these networks, there's no easy way for governments to force them to comply with money-laundering laws.

So instead of trying to force the networks themselves to comply, regulators in the US—and many other jurisdictions—have focused on regulating bitcoin exchanges that help users trade between dollars and cryptocurrencies. Once a bitcoin exchange identifies who initially received a particular bitcoin payment, law enforcement can often trace subsequent payments through a blockchain network's open payment ledger.

In December, Trump's outgoing team at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network—a unit of the Treasury Department focused on money laundering—proposed a new set of rules to tighten the screws on cryptocurrency-based money laundering.

Under the new rules, cryptocurrency-based exchanges would need to file transaction reports with FinCEN any time a customer made a cryptocurrency transaction worth more than $10,000. This would mirror existing rules requiring conventional banks to report when customers make cash withdrawals or deposits worth more than $10,000.

Even more controversial in the cryptocurrency world, FinCEN wants to impose new record-keeping requirements for transactions involving users who manage their own private keys—dubbed "unhosted wallets" by FinCEN. Under FinCEN's proposal, if a cryptocurrency exchange's customer sends more than $3,000 to an unhosted wallet, the exchange would be required to keep a record of the transaction, including the identity of the customer who initiated the payment.

These new rules didn't take effect before Trump left office, so the incoming Biden team will need to decide what to do with them. The Biden administration could sign off on the existing rules, rewrite them, or scrap them altogether. Yellen's comments on Tuesday suggest that she is unlikely to scrap the rules. If anything, the Treasury Department is likely to consider additional regulations of the blockchain economy over the next four years.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

> "Every economist, whether Republican or Democrat, is
> saying that the biggest mistake we can make today is not spending
> enough money."