4th Estate Pleads the 5th

Previously by Gerald Celente: CME Group – Con-Men or a Commodities Exchange?

The MF Global bankruptcy (eighth largest in U.S. history) has all but destroyed confidence in the options and commodity markets. It is an event with enormous implications across the world’s economic spectrum.

However intricate the story may seem, in terms of rules, regulations, and legalities, there is one chief element that is crystal clear. But that one element – the role played by CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) in the debacle – has been all but ignored by the media. Instead, most of their attention has been focused on an estimated $1.2 billion of missing money, and allegations that MF raided segregated customer accounts, in violation of industry rules, to cover the bad high risk bets made by CEO Jon Corzine.

But why the hands-off, kid-glove treatment afforded CME, which has put itself on record as “guarantor” of transactions undertaken by its members … one of which was MF Global?

As evidenced in this video, CME’s Executive Chairman Terry Duffy has boasted, “No customer has every lost a penny as a result of a clearing member default.” Duffy goes on to state unequivocally, “Since we are the guarantor of every transaction that happens in our markets, we have to guarantee the performance of each and every one of these contracts.”

Chicago Mercantile Exchange or Chicago Mafia Enterprise? What’s holding back the media from reporting on this monumental breech of the public trust? The Trends Journal sent this video clip to nearly 50,000 people in the media, worldwide, on November 18th. Yet, not one of the major business, cable or mainstream news outlets has seen fit to call out Terry Duffy who had also confirmed that CME holds “more than $100 billion of collateral to support the transactions that are being done on our markets.”

People and business have been ruined by the MF bankruptcy and the failure of CME to honor its guarantee.

Where is the press? Is the Fourth Estate Pleading the Fifth? Is there a reporter out there that is “Without fear and without favor?” Where are Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Fox and all the rest?

Who has stopped the presses? The Chicago Mafia Enterprise?

Gerald Celente is founder and director of The Trends Research Institute, author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking (Warner Books), and publisher of The Trends Journal. He has been forecasting trends since 1980, and recently called “The Collapse of '09.”