Now that GATA can be quoted, can central banks be asked?

Submitted by cpowell on Mon, 2010-08-30 21:54. Section: Daily Dispatches

6:06p ET Monday, August 30, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

For years GATA banged on the door of the Financial Times, including a meeting in London with the newspaper's commodities reporter a year and a half ago, trying to get some attention for the international central bank gold price suppression scheme. The clamor went without result until this weekend, when the FT published a long story about gold by the paper's personal finance reporter, Ellen Kelleher, which was also in large part about GATA's work. The interview with GATA Chairman Bill Murphy that was cited in the story took place more than three months ago, indicating perhaps the sensitivity of the issue to this organ of the financial establishment.

Of course GATA is grateful for the FT story, for a few reasons:

-- It called GATA and the gold price suppression scheme to the attention of a large and influential audience, though perhaps much of the most influential part of that audience already had its own suspicions about the gold market.

-- It showed that GATA has some respectable and important support, citing the British investment banker Adam Fleming, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, and market analyst Paul Mylchreest.

-- It disparaged the gold dishoarding begun by the British government in 1999, at the bottom of the gold market.

-- It raised doubt about the competence of the government agencies in charge of the international financial system.

-- And it was able to find only the weakest criticism of GATA's work, quoting Martin Murenbeeld of Dundee Wealth Economics: "'It's bunk. ... It's a massive conceit on the part of gold people to think that gold is so important that the Federal Reserve and the president of the United States are out there manipulating the gold price."

Of course to GATA this is not a "massive conceit" at all but a close examination of public record, which is exactly what technical analysts like Murenbeeld arrogantly refuse to undertake. For starters, at least four chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board have publicly implicated the Fed in the gold price suppression scheme:

http://www.gata.org/node/8962

Before ridiculing gold price suppression as "bunk" and a "massive conceit," did Murenbeeld ever try to put any critical questions about gold policy to the Fed, the Treasury Department, or other central banks? Has Murenbeeld ever gotten and published a clear denial of their surreptitious involvement in the gold market? Has he reviewed all central bank correspondence and other communication with investment banks in regard to the gold market, like the communication the Fed insists on keeping secret as GATA sues the Fed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under the Freedom of Information Act? Has Murenbeeld seen the gold swap agreements the Fed acknowledges having with foreign banks, agreements the Fed says are "properly withheld" from the public?

Of course not. Just as in establishment journalism, in technical analysis of the gold market, seeking answers from the primary sources just isn't done. Despite citing GATA so prominently, the FT's weekend story about gold didn't go to the primary sources either -- not once. This is still considered bad manners. But it's more than that with technical analysts like Murenbeeld. For going to the primary sources risks exposing their work, their entire careers, as meaningless. The "massive conceit" is actually technical analysis of manipulated markets.

As KAM LP fund manager Michael Kreiger wrote Friday in his essay "The Elites Have Lost the Right to Rule," posted at Zero Hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/elites-have-lost-right-rule), "... the markets are a hologram put in front of you by the magicians at the Fed." That is, more than the gold market is an illusion, surreptitious central bank market intervention having become so pervasive over the last few years.

Your secretary/treasurer put it this way at GATA's Washington conference in April 2008 (http://www.gata.org/node/6242):

"One market intervention encourages another and another and increases the political pressure to keep intervening to benefit special interests rather than the general interest -- to benefit especially the financial interests, the banking and investment banking industries. These interventions, subsidies to special interests, increasingly are needed to prevent the previous imbalances from imploding. And so we have come to an era of daily market interventions by central banks -- so much so that the main purpose of central banking now is to prevent ordinary markets from happening at all."

A year and a half ago and again this year GATA presented the Financial Times with its complete file of public record documenting the gold price suppression scheme:

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

As far as GATA knows, this file is yet to be quoted from or presented to central bankers by respectable journalistic publications seeking an explanation. But the weekend's FT story is a first step. Perhaps in time journalists for other publications or even the FT itself will try demanding answers from the primary source, the way it used to be done in journalism. If GATA now can be at least mentioned even in the Financial Times, real journalism can't be far away -- along with the end of the gold price suppression scheme.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.