MF Global going bankrupt happened after deregulation. Market collapse of 2008 happened after deregulation.
If you look at countries like Canada and Israel who have strong banking regulations, they fared quite well and never experienced such extremes in economic depressions like the US has after deregulation started in the early 80s.
The one thing you forgot, Caroline, is that this growth was helped by the FACT that the US Dollar is the world reserve currency. In order for things to stay stable across the board, all countries MUST devalue their currency by printing up more of their currency to keep up with the inflation rate of the US. That's partly why you see food riots in countries who are severely impacted by currency inflation. If you, as another country don't do so, your export market risks being impacted by your currency made stronger and thusly, your wares you export become more expensive.
You need to compare the cost of things today in Canada versus 30-40 years ago. I'm sure things have gone up there. You'll find it everywhere you go.
When I said regulation didn't do anything, I was talking SPECIFICALLY about market manipulation in the futures market for commodities and precious metals. I'm talking about companies like JP Morgan, MF Global, CME, HSBC, COMEX, Jefferies, et al. The regulators (CFTC and SEC) HAVE looked the other way while this was going on. The documented evidence is presented here -
Documentation | Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee
There are those of us who believe that there are employees who have infiltrated the CFTC and SEC. Look at CFTC; who is Gary Gensler? He's the Chairman of CFTC. He is ALSO former Goldman Sachs! Not EX-GS, but FORMER-GS. Those of you familiar with Marines understand what this means. What they do, it appears, is that these companies line up their employees to go to work at these agencies, and they are not only on the payroll at their companies, but also at the agencies they have infiltrated! Their job is to block legislation that might hurt their companies, and failing that, fail to implement legislation in a timely manner, or if they have to implement them, they will be lax in enforcement against their own companies, but really enforce it against their enemies in the financial sector. This appears to have happened in 2008 regarding Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns (the latter was saved, while the former was allowed to fail). Consider reading
Soon To Be Former Treasury Secretary Geithner Subpoenaed Over Lehman Fail | ZeroHedge - there are additional links within that you might want to look at. The lack of enforcement is ongoing in the precious metals market, regarding the lack of enforcement of position limits and the delaying of the definition of a "swap," which has an impact on participation in the market.
From Reuters: "The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is expected to vote on a final rule that would define a swap dealer and a major swap participant. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which is working with the CFTC on the joint rules, may also vote on a similar measure next week." This was supposed to have been done and the position limits clarified over a year ago! Hopefully, it will be done tomorrow. They have postponed this several times, and it would not surprise me if something happened and they had to postpone it again.
The deal with the precious metal markets is that JP Morgan inherited a massive silver short position from Bear Stearns in 2008, and they've been trying to work it down. It appears that the way they do that is to go short just before a massive raid on silver, like that occurred in April/May of last year, dropping it from $48.48 all the way down to about 27.15 with the help of CME's FIVE margin calls in a 9-day period that bled out $13 over the course of a few weeks. Once JP Morgan had achieved their objective, they bought back their shorts, and upon giving the shorts back to the source, pocketed the difference, and used that money to pay down their underwater shorts. Once silver bottoms out, JP Morgan goes long so that they can ride the price up and sell out to go into shorts at the high price, and have CME or some related event trigger the selloff, and here the cycle repeats again. They make money in both directions, like an ocean wave generator. That is market manipulation when the prices of something is not based on market fundamentals, like a silver lode discovered or a physical shortage developing, or a war event happening. Look at this 10-year silver chart down at the bottom right, and you'll see what I mean; going from peak to peak in about 2-3 years.
Kitco - Silver Page The perpetrators' behaviors are very predictable, and I have been successful in learning about how this works in the context of a very large-scale historical move of understanding what fiat currency does to a country and supposedly, an intergeneration fight is underway to undo the damage of the previous two generations and slowly reintegrate gold/silver as money with as little disruptions as possible.
They clearly don't want history repeated, especially when you look at ancient Rome, China's experiment with paper money over a thousand years ago, the US Continental Dollar, the French Assignat, Weimar Germany, Hungary, Zimbabwe. They will do ANYTHING to defend the level of civilization we have today. That means we have to go back to a form of money that can be trusted, one that doesn't debase your store of wealth (like your retirement plan from 50 years ago being enough to buy bread, etc.). We also have to go back to an honest way of making money. It won't be done overnight.
People, through the fiat system, have been trained to expect that when you put money into a savings account, you're expected to get money added onto it. Like depositing $100 and getting back $103-105 at the end of a year. Just like that... Without you doing anything. What NEEDS to happen is that if you have 100 ounces of gold, and you want 105 ounces of gold, you should either get outside and work for it in a productive manner, or you should risk the capital in a business endeavor that will give you some return on the money, depending on the risk factors. And you HAVE to be willing to take a loss if you make a bad investment decision. All of us experience this in the stock markets, BUT those well-connected in the financial sectors for the most part have been bailed out through taxpayer money. To reap what you successfully earn, but to be bailed out for your mistakes is called moral hazard. In other words, you don't pay for your mistakes. This leads to being careless about your decisions, especially when customer money is involved, like the situation with MF Global. That damned Corzine got greedy and made some bad bets I NEVER would have made in the first place. I knew he was an idiot for making these bets. What goes around, comes around.
