Letter to Spitzer .......................The attached letter to Spitzer was mailed this morning "registered mail, return receipt requested." Go GATA!!
February 11, 2004
To The Honorable Eliot Spitzer
Attorney General
State of New York
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
Dear Mr. Spitzer,
You have been making quite a name for yourself these past several years, and America is grateful for what you have done in exposing the egregious criminality permeating Wall Street.
But Wall Street and its corporate wheeler-dealers do not have a monopoly on criminality. Malfeasence plays both sides of the fence in human affairs. In other words, it poisons our government also. It is poisoning our government in massive ways at this very instant. It does this in the regulatory divisions of Washington and New York when the authorities in charge merely wink at the law and look the other way while corporate/banking elites play the people for suckers.
Obviously you are aware of the blatant price riggers in the COMEX silver market who are playing the people for suckers. So you have a very heavy decision to make. If you refuse to prosecute the corporate/banking elites involved (or at the very least apply severe pressure from behind the scenes to have the COMEX authorities shut them down), then how possibly can you go in front of the electorate come 2006 to run for Governor of New York, and be thought of as anything but just another political humbug winking at the law yourself? Have you not then taken that first step down the slippery slope of cronyism and political complicity that mars practically all of our government personnel today?
It does no good to say you can't prosecute everyone who commits a crime. Your job is to prosecute the serious crimes. And eight mega-bank traders stealing billions of dollars from small investors and miners all over America because the COMEX rules are being conveniently ignored is a serious crime. The seriousness lies in the fact that they can only pull off what they are doing because of the very government that you work for, i.e., the regulators who are granting them special treatment. They and the regulatory officers involved are operating a cartel, and it is in violation of the same antitrust laws that you prosecuted the Gambinos for in their efforts to carve up the garment-industry trucking business several years back.
Why were you so aggressive then, but so complacent now? Is it possibly because this time the crimes involved are being committed by one of your own -- the government watch dogs in charge of the markets? Going after the Gambinos gets one lots of sizzling press, doesn't it? But are the financial goons of Wall Street and their regulatory henchmen any different? Certainly not. They just dress a bit sleeker and speak a more urbane jargon. Their educational pedigree consists of terms at Harvard and Yale instead of the streets of Brooklyn.
You had no trouble going after the big brokerages like Merrill, Smith Barney, and their outrageous analyst corruption, so obviously you are not adverse to taking on Big Corporations when they commit crime. Why so quiescent now, however, when the crimes involved are spawned by Big Government personnel? This looks like protection of one's own, and it is precisely why a growing number of Americans hate their government. It is supposed to protect our rights, and it does precisely the opposite. It has now become the largest violator of our rights. It has become a Gambino organization with tanks and praetorian guards to back up its bullying. Is this what you wish to make your life a testament to? That you condoned mafia mentalities when they were ensconced in bureaucracy, but brought out the long knives when such mentalities came from the marketplace?
Your comrades at the Federal level are all caught up in ramming the rules down the throat of Martha Stewart, and I'm sure you stand in full support of their efforts. Yet you are ignoring blatant billion dollar price riggers in your own back yard! Who is a bigger menace to the public? Stewart and her piddly 4,000 shares of stock sold, or the fat cat banks and their venal regulatory partners who are violating the rights of millions of Americans with their manipulatory game of naked shorting? The fat cats cannot pull off their shorting tactics unless the government authorities overseeing the market ALLOW THEM TO DO SO!! This outrage is being committed only because of corruption at high levels of government.
As of today, the American justice department on both the federal level and the New York state level borders on the comic. Martha Stewart a danger to the public?!! Come on!! To prosecute her pitiful little "insider" trade, while ignoring open, massive, manipulatory malfeasence to the tune of millions of dollars being skimmed from tens of thousands of average Americans will certainly not win you any plaudits from the historians. It will win you scorn.
We the people are mystified. Up till now, you have shown yourself to be astonishingly different than your predecessors. But the COMEX price rigging fraud is a big part of the cesspool that our government-corporate cartelized world has become, Mr. Spitzer. It requires a hero with a shovel to clean it up, not a "go-along-to-get-along-guy" looking for a way to suppress the criminality of government personnel. I hope that you will do the right thing here and do to the Big Government scum what you did to the brokerage scum and the mafia scum. The people of New York hope so too; they deserve such a man as their governor -- a man who will stand up for what is right, not lay down for what is expedient.
Sincerely yours,
Nelson Hultberg
Dallas, Texas
Michael Gorham
Director of Market Oversight
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
3 Lafayette Centre
1155 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20581