Manipulation to the Max?

I’ve been skeptical of claims the financial markets are manipulated by government. There had been evidence of banks manipulating indexes such as LIBOR, and in precious metals. There’s probably a lot of “legal” manipulation via HFTs frontrunning trades with the help of exchanges. I put legal in quotes because firms claim to be market making or providing liquidity, but market makers used to take risk, while some of these firms seem to never have down days. It'a a big red flag for fraud. Whether legal or not, when this era finally ends, Wall Street and financial markets will be treated similarly to how they were in the New Deal. Today’s heroes will become villains.

Still, until I see smoking gun evidence of fraud, it's an unverified claim. The markets are behaving as expected when there’s a relentless bid from retirement funds being invested in high risk securities through passive index funds, along with an endless bid from speculators who think the Federal Reserve’s number-one job is pumping the stock market.

After the bear market, firms such as Blackrock, Vanguard, Invesco and maybe companies offering 401k menus, the whole investment industry really, could be charged with fraud, criminal negligence and so forth. There won’t be any way to replace two generations of lost retirement savings, but all of these firms can be destroyed and their executives placed in jail. If this ends up being a bigger bust than 1929, expect a bigger response from government even if it is unfair, unjust scapegoating.

However. I saw this claim on Twitter:

If the Federal Reserve is manipulating commodity prices, it is engaged in criminal fraud. Everyone involved is committing criminal acts with no legal protection, only political cover if the current regime OK'd it. It is likely at the behest of the criminal regime in Washington, DC. If this is going on, and this is only a claim on social media, but at this point it wouldn’t shock given how the Federal Reserve has expanded its operations in the past decade. Nor would it shock considering all the criminal and seditious actions being taken by USG.

Widespread criminal activity at the heart of government and the financial system would be precisely the type of rot you’d expect ahead of or during a Fourth Turning. If the public ever move on from Trump, Kennedy and current outsiders, and found itself a real rival elite, and if such a man could win against a criminal regime willing to rig elections, he would become a defacto dictator for the simple reason that arresting most of the ruling class would be step one of any reform effort. Otherwise as with Trump, they would engage in seditious conspiracies to thwart any reform.

Moreover, they are building an authoritarian, fascist system fusing government power with corporate operations. The government is the iron hand of tyranny, corporations the velvet glove that carries out what is still currently illegal for government. It's like a turnkey operation for a would-be Pinochet.

The government doesn’t openly use all its powers because it would be unpopular at this stage. Probably not as unpopular as it should be. About a third of the country seems to be on board with fascism as long as it's against their enemies. When the depression is in full swing though, and if the public revolts for real, they will cheer a President who makes full use of the national security state against the current ruling class. He can use military tribunals to wipe them out, and his face will be added to Mount Rushmore. Such is the scale of coming events. That, or the bad guys win and consolidate power. They are already using state power against political enemies and jailing supporters of rival politicians. If they keep going, the USA turns into something like modern China with permanently manipulated markets with a fig leaf of private ownership and rigged elections acting as the veneer for a totalitarian state.