Barclays fined £26m for failings surrounding the London Gold Fixing and former Barclays trader banned and fined for inappropriate conduct

http://www.fca.org.uk/news/barclays-fined-26m-for-failings-surrounding-the-london-gold-fixing

Barclays Fined For Manipulating Price Of Gold For A Decade; Sending "Bursts" Of Sell Orders

Anybody still think I'm a conspiracy theorist?  Of course, the illegal price suppression will continue as the big players are still in the game.  Governments won't prosecute themselves.  Anybody have anymore tin foil hats?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-23/barclays-fined-manipulating-price-gold-decade-sending-bursts-sell-orders

It would appear that Plunkett is indeed nothing more than another instance of "Kerviel" or "Tourre" - an irrelevant mid-level trader thrown at the wolves of public consumption just so the attention can be redirected from the real manipulation elsewhere, and much higher up.

This is hardly surprising, as we noted three days ago when we wrote about the Barclays head gold trader termination:

"Bottom line: just like the Silver Fixing which last week announced its winddown, the days of the 117-year-old Gold fix are numbered. But to preserve continuity of riggedness and manipulation, perhaps they can just outsource their job duties to the biggest manipulators of all: Bank of England, the Fed and, of course, the BIS."

So yes: it is now a fact that gold is manipulated by various commercial banks, and that those gold "raids" one sees every morning usually around the time of the London fix aren't accidental at all but are entirely designed to reprice the market, but how deeper does the rabbit hole go?

[FCA Director Tracy] McDermott added: “Firms should be in no doubt that the spotlight will remain on wholesale conduct and we will hold them to account if they fail to meet our standards.”

Alas, this is a lie - by handing Plunkett to the public on a silver platter, it simply means that the far bigger and more important players in the gold manipulation market - stretching all the way to central bank and, of course, bank of central bank level, will simply be allowed to continue business "as usual."

So for those who want the real people behind the real manipulation before they all scatter into the dust, we urge you to reread "From Rothschild To Koch Industries: Meet The People Who "Fix" The Price Of Gold." Because the gold manipulation rabbit hole goes far, far deeper than just one single, solitary trader...

High-frequency trading firm Panther Energy fined in ‘spoofing’ case

This is rich--every too-big-to-fail bank on Wall Street executes high-frequency trading, including fake bids and offers to mislead market participants.  It's called the Wall Street head fake--only in its high-speed electronic format.  With all the HFT algorithms taking place, the CFTC chooses to target Panther Energy, a small fry in the big scheme of things?

What about the bigger hedge funds--or the proprietary trading operations of the big banks themselves?  Or are their armies of attorneys too cozy with the regulators?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/high-frequency-trading-firm-fined-in-spoofing-case/2013/07/22/361e26bc-f2d8-11e2-ae43-b31dc363c3bf_story.html