Needs a bit of context
Remember to add an abstract or beginning of article as a general thing
___
When we learned that the former head of JPM's commodities group - Blythe Master - the person caught red-handed in trying to pull off Enron 2.0, and responsible for manipulating electricity prices in California, was about to join the CFTC: yes, the person who created perhaps the most important derivative product of the pre-crash period, the massively levered Credit Default Swaps, was about to become an advisor to the very agency tasked with regulating all derivatives. Just 24 hours later, following a furious public backlash against what is perhaps the most corrupt regulators in the US, the CFTC, Masters withdrew her candidacy from the CFTC.
The reason for the populist fury was not so much that Blythe was caught, and then let go, in trying to pull off another Ken Lay (she got away, he didn't), but due to prevailing anger at the one person who many personify with all that is manipulated in the gold market. Recall that long before the world's biggest banks were busted for rigging precious metals, that Blythe Masters made one of her rare appearances on CNBC telling the channel that "JPM's commodities business is not about betting on commodity prices but about assisting clients"... "it's about assisting clients in executing, managing, their risks and ensuring access to capital so they can make the kind of large long-term investments that are needed in the long run to expand the supply of commodities"
