Silver and Jeff Currie's Departure from Goldman Sachs as Chief of Commodities Research

Jeff Currie, Goldman Sachs’ Global Head of Commodities Research, is leaving the company it was announced this week.

Currie made one of the most notable comments in memory about the silver market on CNBC on February 4, 2021.

During the discussion, Currie stated that retail investors could not cause a squeeze on the silver market by buying silver Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) as the ETFs buy silver for ETF shareholders but then immediately use these same silver bars to sell claims against (short) the ETF metal into the US COMEX silver market.

Currie claims that the ETFs are ‘hedging’ their holdings but this does not stand up to scrutiny as the ETFs he describes hold metal for clients who take a long position - there is nothing for the ETFs to ‘hedge’.

Currie’s statement was remarkable as it was an open, public statement by an industry pro, who would have primary source knowledge, that ETFs were creating fake silver supply in the market by rehypothecating (creating multiple claims) on ETF/client assets.

Currie’s startling revelation of what amounts to silver price manipulation by ETFs, against their silver investor clients, was met with zero comment by the mainstream financial press.

His discussion on CNBC about silver ETFs shorting their silver fund metal can be heard here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESxpDsUmQRE

Observers of the relatively opaque silver market will be aware of the shortage of silver bars in the wholesale market in NY and London that is driving silver lease rates to high levels and is causing unusual settlement of trade positions to clear claims from the CME COMEX silver market - the latter can be observed in daily posts on Reddit by user ‘Ditch_the_DeepState’ here:

https://www.reddit.com/user/Ditch_the_DeepState/

Silver’s implied lease rates are here:

Given Currie’s departure from Goldman Sachs during this period of silver market distress, it will be interesting to observe with time if his departure is linked to increasing problems that bullion banks and ETFs appear to be experiencing in the silver market today.

Price manipulations always fail and do so primarily due to shortage of the manipulated asset from such malpricing schemes.

Best regards,

David Jensen