Ranting Andy: Demystifying Andrew McGuire

GATA Gold Rush turned out to be all I had hoped for, a historical gathering of great, like-minded people spreading the message of gold manipulation, occurring just as it appears the Cartel may be entering an accelerating phase of decline.  Over 400 attendees from 38 countries converged to hear the message of the world-class speakers, leaving me no doubt whatsoever that its ramifications will be tangible, immediate, and far-reaching.

But what could I INCREMENTALLY learn from a group of people I have followed for nearly a decade, many of whom I have heard a dozen or more times?  Yes, I picked up a few tidbits here and there, but there was one topic that I yearned to get my hands around, one that I would only be able to gain closure about at this conference.

And that topic was the mystery of Andrew McGuire, the whistleblower who burst onto the scene in March 2010 when his testimony was blurted out to the CFTC by Bill Murphy, who read that testimony as fast as humanly possible to enable the entire bombshell of evidence to be put onto the public record.

Obviously I have followed Andrew McGuire’s saga closely, particularly because as his testimony appears to have played a major role in the past year’s loosening of the Cartel noose around silver.  To be honest, I harbored doubts for a few reasons, particularly as I hadn’t seen all the evidence he had submitted, but also because I had never met the man, and thus was unsure about his motivations.

 I think it was brilliant how GATA saved his presentation for the last, keeping the mystique alive but also building the conference to an exciting crescendo.  No doubt many in the “shadow world” of Precious Metals questioned his existence, and even more the sordid details of the hit-and-run car accident purported to have befallen him and his wife a day after the CFTC hearing bomb shell was released.  Moreover, he seemed to keep a low profile throughout the conference, so I sense that his speech on Saturday afternoon was the first time most attendees got a look at his face.

Anyhow, I was fortunate enough to meet him early on Friday, to my great pleasure.  It turns out he is an extremely engaging and likeable fellow, and his wife equally charming.  We hit it off immediately, enabling my mental image of him to commence quite favorably.  But it wasn’t until he actually spoke of his experiences that I would learn the true nature of the man.

With the presentation about to start, I frankly had no idea what topic he would discuss.  Hopefully we would learn the details of his experience, but perhaps he would disappoint with a series of platitudes and “no comments.”

Thankfully, when the moment of truth arrived, the answer was the former!

Before meeting him and finally gaining the ability to put context to the available public knowledge of his story, the single largest issue I had was his motivation.  After all, he was a London silver trader, and no doubt had profited from learning to “trade with the Cartel.”  There is nothing inherently illegal, or even immoral, about such activity, and in hindsight I have many times wished I had the courage to try the same thing, particularly given my advanced understanding of the Cartel’s day-to-day tendencies.  But nonetheless, it rubbed me the wrong way, as no doubt I was victimized countless times by silver waterfall declines in which he was on the other side of the trade.  But I am now convinced 100% of his integrity, whether he engaged in silver short sales profitably or not.

McGuire is a silver trader, both for his personal account and an undisclosed number of domestic (UK) and international account, at least some of them domiciled in Asia (whom he noted will NOT trade on the fraudulent COMEX exchange).  He is thus involved in trading large-sized orders each day, and has been involved in such activity for close to three decades.  Thus, he is likely as “plugged in” to what is going on at the LBMA as anyone in the world, with the ability to sense illegal activity quite easily, particularly in silver (as opposed to gold) given the incredibly small size of the market, which at times can be extremely thin (such as Sunday night, May 1^st, i.e. the date of the SUNDAY NIGHT PAPER SILVER MASSACRE).

After watching suspicious trading activity for several years, he started to sense something was very wrong when he watched the silver price violently attacked (from $20 to $8) during the initial stages of the global economic crisis in mid-2008.  He admitted to clearly understanding the Cartel “code” by then, that how it “signaled” to traders its intentions, and equally importantly was present when Cartel traders (you know who) would BRAG to him about their illegal exploits while celebrating with expensive cigars and $1,000 bottles of champagne at the local pub.

My sense is that he was torn mentally by a number of forces, including a desire to do his job profitably (who doesn’t have that desire, particularly in the EXTREMELY treacherous world of trading), his desire to remain anonymous, a survival instinct to avoid trouble, an altruistic need to protect the innocent, and, of course, everyone’s base hatred of bullies.

McGuire had been a GATA subscriber for some time, although it is unclear exactly how die-hard his beliefs were in manipulation.  Frankly, anyone that subscribes to GATA (I’d be surprised if there are more than 5,000 of us worldwide) is likely to feel strongly about the topic, but even if not, there is no doubt he was well versed in GATA’s beliefs, and certainly aware of the mounting empirical and anecdotal evidence presented daily by Bill Murphy on the James Joyce table, as well as contributors such as myself on the other tables.

At that point, McGuire started to voice his concerns to a number of colleagues and clients, only to get the typical response that I and other “conspiracy theorists” receive when we broach the topic of gold and silver manipulation….in other words, something ranging from indifference to skepticism to, in many cases, outright hostility.

But Andrew was by this time 100% convinced of his theories regarding silver manipulation, and thus determined to make sure his voice was heard, no matter who he alienated and how much personal risk he put himself in.  In fact, by this time he had accumulated IRREFUTABLE PROOF of such illegal activities, via maintaining copies of incriminating emails and phone messages.

Eventually, he called Adrian Douglas of GATA to regale him with his tale, and FINALLY, after more than a decade of battle, the GATA Army had its long-awaited SMOKING GUN!  With the CFTC hearings upcoming in March 2010, and Bill Murphy having scored a coup by getting on the testifiers list, this was too good of an opportunity to pass up.  Moreover, McGuire had already sent the incriminating emails to CFTC board members including Chairman Gary Gensler, who in my view is as ensconced in this fraud as any of the principal players, simply based on the fact that he has been silent the topic of silver manipulation. 

Few people realize that a CFTC silver manipulation investigation has been ongoing for YEARS without a single published conclusion, simply AMAZING given that something like 90% of all posted complaints about position limit violations have been focused on the silver market.  Not to mention, that CFTC board member Bart Chilton, in my view the only uncorrupted member of the board, has publicly proclaimed his strong belief that the silver market is manipulated!  

Of course, none of the evidence McGuire forwarded to the CFTC was responded to, so it was time to put “OPERATION CARTEL DESTRUCTION” into action, in other words to have Bill Murphy release such information to the world at the CFTC position limit hearings.

As many of you already know, the feed to Bill’s testimony was mysteriously blocked out to the public by a timely technical glitch which coincidentally started just as he gave his prepared remarks and was conveniently fixed just as he finished.  However, the idiots behind that nefarious scheme were too stupid to block out the feeds to BOTH Windows Media Player (which most people were viewing the hearings on) AND Real Player, so a number of people were still able to record the Real Player version, supplementing on videotape the archived words from the hearing itself.

Bill knew he had a very limited time to speak, and thus mustered all his speed-reading abilities to launch a complete account of McGuire’s allegations, broadcasting them to the world for all posterity, as well as the CFTC Board themselves.

And thus, at this point in time on March 25, 2010, commencement of the END GAME for PAPER SILVER MANIPULATION had begun.  In fact, not only has global awareness of this fraud promulgated exponentially, but the silver price has since convincingly broken out.  Simultaneously, reams of empirical evidence have been collected documenting the deteriorating effectiveness of Cartel silver attacks (which have only intensified), notably my own work in RANTS such as “Manipulation Saturation” and Adrian Douglas’ fantastic statistical correlation studies.

Anyhow, back to Andrew McGuire.  As essentially everyone reading this missive is aware, he and his wife were purported to have been struck by a hit-and-run driver the very day following the CFTC hearings, after which a helicopter chase ensued, but somehow failed to nab the perpetrators.  I was dying to hear the story first-hand, and although he was reticent about discussing such a traumatic experience in public, agreed to do so at the behest of GATA.  And what a tale it was!

First off, it was quite clear by his demeanor that the assault was both real and potentially fatal, and ANYONE listening would have come to the same conclusion, i.e. that it was in fact an attempted assassination.  A “commercial vehicle” apparently came out of nowhere to hit he and his wife while walking, yielding substantial injuries that to this day have not fully healed.  Fortunately, they both escaped death by a combination of instinct and luck, as did an innocent bystander who made the mistake of attempting to stop the driver and was nearly intentionally run over as well.

This “hit man” was so intent on escaping that he barreled through a neighboring gas station, smashing numerous other cars in the process, and proceeded to race through London with a police chopper in tow.  Amazingly, he initially got away, although McGuire was assured by police that they knew the culprit’s identity.  Even more amazingly, it was not until two months later that he was informed the perp had been captured…..and sentenced to just a fine and a few points on his driving record!

Obviously this incident is the most “interesting” aspect of the saga, although not so much to McGuire and his wife.  He is not the first person to have “paid the price” for defying the government (whom unquestionably the silver manipulators represent), but certainly the first to personally come to my attention, and obviously the first high profile case in the Precious Metals realm.  There is no longer a shred of doubt in my mind that McGuire knew the risks he was taking in exposing this high-level fraud (“a matter of National Security” in the criminals’ minds), truly personifying the “Whistleblower” moniker he has now been given by society.

Fast forwarding to today, he is currently the star witness in numerous lawsuits against JP Morgan and other henchman banks for their alleged roles (alleged, yeah right!) in paper silver manipulation, as well as the ongoing CFTC investigation into this matter.  He is absolutely certain the lawsuits will never reach the discovery stage because JP Morgan would obviously settle rather than open up their trading books.  Thus, he is particularly focused on the CFTC investigation of the matter, where JP Morgan would not have the option of buying their way out of public conviction. 

The timing and outcomes of these cases are obviously unknown, and I wouldn’t hold my breath that the CFTC will publicly state that JP Morgan (in my opinion, its PARTNER IN CRIME) committed any illegal acts.  But irrespective, the “cat is out of the bag” regarding silver manipulation, and I can assure you the SMART MONEY in China, India, Russia, the Middle East, and other environs is quite aware that the only major negative factor in the silver market today is the fraudulent, unbacked PAPER short selling that is SURE to be eventually destroyed by demand for  REAL, PHYSICAL metal.

Before I conclude, I wanted to note one particular comment McGuire made, corroborating a central tenet of my RANTS this year.  In other words, my contention that November 9^th, 2010 was “D-DAY” as far as the Cartel realizing it needed to STEP UP its manipulative efforts in the face of SOARING PHYSICAL silver demand.

As most readers are well-aware, I have exhaustively studied the price action of gold, silver and the large-cap Precious Metal mining stocks since that date, the day silver initially rocketed to nearly $30/oz, drawing in massive, euphoric buying of mining stocks at record trading level.  At that point, it appeared to me a public mania for the mining sector was on the verge of commencing, the mania I had been awaiting since 2002.  Enter the ALGOs, which in my mind have not only infiltrated PAPER gold and silver vehicles (such as SLV and GLD) on a 24/7 basis, but have injected a cancer into the large-cap mining stocks which seems to only get worse each day (last week’s action was a perfect example of the damage these cancerous ALGOs can do, highlighting EXACTLY why I sold my large-cap miners earlier this year, NEVER to return).

Anyhow, McGuire noted that he, too, saw these type of ALGOs, or as I call them “GOVERNMENT COMPUTER PROGRAMS”, start to attack the silver markets with a vengeance about 10 months ago, essentially right in line with my estimate of when they entered the mining share space.  I wasn’t kidding when I referred to D-DAY as “CARTEL PHYSICAL CRISIS #1”, and am now 100% convinced that these ALGOs were created specifically as a response. 

Readers, no matter how bullish you are about this sector, remember that the most important aspect of gold and silver investing is to PROTECT YOURSELF from imminent hyperinflation, and in my view the only way you can GUARANTEE VICTORY on this front is to have a MAJOR position in the actual PHYSICAL metal, stored very carefully in a manner minimizing the threat of confiscation (for god sakes, NO safe deposit boxes) or theft, or perhaps VERY SELECTED “paper gold” vehicles such as James Turk’s goldmoney.com, Stefan Spicer’s closed-end bullion trusts CEF, GTU, and SVRZF, and Sprott Securities similar closed-end vehicles PHYS and PSLV.

To conclude this long rant, penned on the long flight home from London, by far the most important aspect of the GATA conference, in my eyes, was the incremental information learned from meeting Andrew McGuire and hearing his incredible tale firsthand.  If there was any doubt in my mind about the nature or intentions of this brave man, it has been 100% erased.  I am completely convinced that he went through a great deal of mental deliberation about the ramifications of his whistleblowing actions, which clearly injured him in many ways and permanently put his life in harm’s way.

In other words, KUDOS to Andrew McGuire for his extreme acts of altruism, truly defining what it means to be PATRIOTIC and SELFLESS to the good cause.  I have modeled my way of life in the manner of great people such as him, and can only hope society as a whole will one day think, and act, in a like manner.