JPMorgan Chase Added to LBMA Gold Price

Mineweb reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) has been added to the LBMA gold price. The firm joins six other participants.

Commenting on the situation, Lawrence Williams said:

If any bank selection could be guaranteed to inflame those within the gold bull community who preach gold price manipulation, it would be the addition of JP Morgan, following that of Goldman Sachs and UBS, over the original four members of the old London Gold Fixing panel. A cynic might suggest the LBMA and ICE might have made the selection of the participants to deliberately rile GATA and its supporters as all the above banks are those widely reckoned by the gold price manipulation theorists to be controlling the gold price for their own ends and for those of some allied central banks. Manna for the conspiracy theorists!

He also noted that no Chinese banks have been added to the LBMA gold price yet:

And still there are no Chinese banks involved. Will there ever be? Until the benchmarking process participants are widened to include entities from outside the Western banking elite, the process will remain suspect in the eyes of those who feel that there are no level playing fields in the global financial markets – if indeed there ever were!

Click here to read the full Mineweb report.