Ted Butler: U.S. government is part of the war on silver

11:38a ET Monday, July 23, 2012

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver):

Silver market analyst Ted Butler writes today that he has come to believe that the U.S. government, while not the instigator of the silver price manipulation scheme, has become a participant in it and that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has purported to be investigating the silver market for nearly four years, has been neutered by the U.S. Treasury Department, which has given its market-rigging agent, JPMorganChase & Co., immunity from criminal prosecution.

None of this should be so surprising, as even Butler himself has noted that when the U.S. government demonetized silver in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed that the government would intervene in the silver market as necessary to keep the price down, presumably by dishoarding from the government's silver stockpile.

Signing the demonetization legislation, the president said:

"Some have asked whether our silver coins will disappear. The answer is very definitely -- no. Our present silver coins won't disappear and they won't even become rarities. We estimate that there are now 12 billion -- I repeat, more than 12 billion -- silver dimes and quarters and half dollars that are now outstanding. We will make another billion before we halt production. And they will be used side-by-side with our new coins. Since the life of a silver coin is about 25 years, we expect our traditional silver coins to be with us in large numbers for a long, long time. If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value."

Johnson's comments have been archived with other presidential documents by the University of California at Santa Barbara here:

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-signing-the-coinag...

Of course Johnson's promises about keeping silver coins in circulation and keeping silver's price down were not fulfilled. The government's silver stockpile was exhausted and U.S. silver coins did indeed disappear from circulation. But the government's interest in suppressing the price of the monetary metal, suppressing the value of a competitive currency, endures.

Indeed, like so much in the U.S. government's gold price suppression scheme, the silver price suppression scheme is largely a matter of official public record rather than mere "conspiracy theory." But GATA has no idea what it will take to induce mainstream financial journalists to examine the official public record, even as we keep urging them to do so.

Butler's commentary is headlined "The War on Silver" and it's posted at GoldSeek's companion site, SilverSeek, here:

http://www.silverseek.com/commentary/war-silver

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