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When I attended the recent, Cambridge resource investor conference in Vancouver, I made sure to set aside time to see the presentation of the Gold Anti-Trust Action committee – more commonly known as GATA. While I was already quite familiar with the work of this non-profit organization, I still had several reasons for wanting to be there.

First, as a writer, I was looking for any crumbs of information I could glean from these veterans of the Gold Wars. However, I was also interested in attempting to gauge the audience which attended the presentation.

In that respect, my first observation was to note that there were actually a few, empty seats – in contrast to the other presentations I had seen which were generally “standing room only”. To be fair, GATA was given one of the larger lecture halls, but this was still a surprise to me. Of those who were there, it was obvious by audience questions and reactions that these people were the “converts” - people like myself, who did not need to be convinced of the existence of gold- (and silver-) manipulation, but were simply there to talk about what to do with respect to this issue.

This indicates that contrary to the propaganda of the gold bears, the gold market remains an undiscovered mystery to most investors. To begin with, only a tiny portion of investors hold any gold at all in their portfolios. If every investor bought the 5% to 10% weighting in gold which (now) even most mainstream money-managers advocate, all the gold-vaults of the central banks would have been emptied long ago.

Indeed, as I have written on previous occasions, the creation of these mammoth, so-called “bullion-ETF's” were perpetrated with the explicit purpose of diluting the dollars entering the precious metals sector, by diverting many/most of those dollars into yet more banker-paper: “bullion” backed by nothing but the empty promises of bankers.

Morgan Stanley clients became painfully aware of the aware of the value of those promises when they instructed Morgan Stanley to purchase bullion for their accounts, but Morgan Stanley only pretended to do so. At trial, Morgan Stanley agreed to pay millions in damages to settle that law-suit.

The hollow scams which most (but not all) “bullion-ETF's” represent is even more obvious in the silver market ("Your ETF-silver is For Sale"), where all the bars of bullion “backing” these funds have “for sale” stickers on them, available to anyone willing to pay the current, “spot” price. Should that silver be purchased by investors (or industrial users) who want/need real silver, then all that investors in funds like SLV will be holding is paper.

The fact that the vast majority of the investing public remains ignorant of the numerous, obvious ways in which the gold market is “rigged”, and the price suppressed is clearly a sore point with GATA, despite a decade of their tireless efforts. GATA's Secretary-Treasurer Chris Powell wasted no time in addressing this issue head-on in his speech.

“Most people think of GATA as a 'conspiracy' organization,” observed Powell, “When, in fact, we are an information organization.” He added that GATA's mission was simply to collect those facts which either suggest or document the manipulation of precious metals markets – and then to publicize those facts with every means at their disposal.

Another area where GATA simply documents the manipulation of the gold market is through their collection of confessions of prominent banking officials with respect to their own activities to manipulate the price of gold. While GATA boasts three, such confessions on their site, I have always been quite content to rely upon one – the most famous one – from none other than Sir Alan Greenspan.

As part of a discussion where Greenspan, himself chose to link public perceptions (i.e. “expectations”) of inflation with the price of gold, he made the famous remark that “central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.”

The reason why this one quote has always been more than sufficient “ammunition” from my perspective is because it provides not only the evidence of manipulation, but also the explicit reasons why the banking cabal engages in that manipulation. In Federal Reserve minutes, Greenspan explicitly notes on pages 39 and 40 (and elsewhere) that the bankers' entire paper currency scheme is dependent on maintaining the confidence of the public – literally a “confidence scheme” (or “scam”).

When Greenspan and other bankers talk about what they will (and did) do in the event of a “monetary crisis”, the discussion never revolves around doing something to increase the value of the paper which the bankers call “money”. The paper is worthless, the bankers know it is worthless – and thus there is nothing they can do to add value (and thus faith) in an instrument which can never be a “store of value”.

Therefore, maintaining the bankers' fiat currency scam revolves around doing everything possible to discredit the legitimate alternative to their un-backed, banker paper – and the only true “money” our species has ever known: precious metals. The central principle in the scheme to discredit precious metals is to be especially ruthless in their price-fixing during times of high inflation, in order to attempt to sever the natural link between rising inflation, and an acceleration in the rising price of gold.

The reason why this one form of attack is so important to the bankers is that if gold is allowed to rise naturally in markets: always at or above the rate of inflation, this reinforces both that gold is a “store of value”, and that their banker “money” is not. The moment that realization sinks in with the majority of the public, the bankers' confidence scam fails, and their “money” becomes worthless – as has happened with every other fiat currency in history.

As usual, GATA also devoted some time to the empirical evidence of rampant, precious metals price-fixing which is demonstrated by the “short” positions of bullion banks (primarily Wall Street banks), which are proportionately larger than any other short positions in the history of commodity-markets.

GATA pointed out how in other commodity sectors short positions are typically used by either the producers of a commodity, or an industrial-user - legitimately - to hedge against the price volatility which occurs in market which are not rigged. Has JP Morgan ever dug a single ounce of silver out of the ground? Has it ever manufactured a piece of jewelry?

The answer to those questions is “no”. Yet that bankster, and a handful of other oligarchs hold roughly ¾ of all the (gigantic) short positions in these markets, with (by GATA's latest count) JP Morgan accounting for 40% of the global short position in silver, all by itself. As further proof that the sole purpose of this shorting is for price-fixing, these mammoth positions have remained in place for decades, and demonstrated none of the correlation with price which occurs in short positions in all other commodity markets.

We have actors engaging in these mammoth, shorting activities who have no valid, commercial purpose for even being in this market, and where the behavior of these shorts clearly deviates from the behavior of all other commodity-shorts: either to maximize profits (on their trades) or to hedge against price changes. Instead, this shorting (for decades) has demonstrated only one objective: price-suppression.

When Chris Powell lamented how the mainstream media has been able to continue to dupe the public into perceiving GATA as a “conspiracy organization”, I shared his pain. As a commentator who regularly addresses the manipulation of precious metals markets in my own writing, I too am subject to the barbs of being a “conspiracy” theorist. You can show people the evidence again, and again, and again – but you cannot force them to open their eyes.

Still, gradually, eyes are opening. A growing number of the readers I interact with are treating precious metals manipulation as “fact”, rather than “theory”. Meanwhile, the shrill denials of the gold-haters have diminished – as these zealots question their own beliefs, in the face of a quadrupling of the price of gold and silver, along with how the gold-bulls have being proven right again and again with respect to both the gold market, and recent economic events.

The reality that public awareness of the rampant manipulation of the precious metals markets remains minimal is frustrating. The fact that precious metals can quadruple in price, during a decade in which the bankers radically increased their attacks on this market, while almost the entire investor community has remained oblivious to this market (until the last few months) should give any astute investor some indication of where the precious metals market is headed when people finally realize the truth about the bankers' paper “money” scam.

When a market maelstrom ensues upon realizing the extent of the bankers' fraud, a second realization will also immediately become apparent: precious metals are the only, sure “safe harbour” to escape that storm. The prudent time to seek any safe harbour is before the storm begins – not just as your boat is about to capsize.

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written by dturner, January 28, 2010

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for responding and for your view on fiat currencies. Here's the link again to the story, hopefully it works this time:

http://www.goldalert.com/stories/Gold-Price-Steady-at-1100-as-Grantham-Blasts-the-Fed-

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written by Jeff Nielson, January 27, 2010

Hi Dturner.

I just checked the link which you supplied, but unfortunately it was already "dead".

Generally, "yes", anything which furthers the reckless expansion of fiat-paper not only IMMEDIATELY makes precious metals (relatively) more valuable, but perhaps more importantly, it pushes the ENTIRE SYSTEM toward the "chasm": the day when the masses wake up and finally figure out that all the banker-paper isn't simply worth less, but rather WORTHLESS.

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written by dturner, January 27, 2010

Although not specifically related to GATA, I just saw this very interesting article on Jeremy Grantham's recent criticism of the Fed and its role in blowing numerous asset bubbles. It seems to further the investment case for gold given the Fed's misguided policies and it also talks about some of the implications of the Fed's actions for the broader financial markets:

http://www.goldalert.com/stories/Gold-Price-Steady-at-1100-as-Grantham-Blasts-the-Fed-

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written by JsJ, January 25, 2010

I've heard estimates for the eventual price target of gold, silver, etc. People talk about $6K gold and $200 silver, but I think part of the calculation is the quantity of gold or silver in the world. If the short positions in silver misrepresent the total quantity of available silver, then the estimates are probably too low since the pool of supply is smaller than reported. Same with gold leasing and the GLD ETF. Unless the given prognosticator specifically calculated in the overestimation of above-ground supply, then their prediction must be low.

I see this as merely an intellectual exercise, because the price will be whatever the market sets it at. Still, it's fun to think it over.

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written by Jeff Nielson, January 25, 2010

Thanks Brian. I forgot to add in the piece that GATA told the audience there were TWO paths to "victory": legal victories in the courtroom, or simply educating people through publicizing their work/research.

So I'm doing my small part to give this organization a little more visibility.

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written by brian boutilier, January 25, 2010

Bravo Jeff. This topic can't be in print too often. The large banks have vast interest in keeping the dollar steady. Additionally they have over 200 billion of short positions in the OTC going back to the hunt days when silver was run up to 50 $/OZ. If silver price gets high enough, folks could take the physical silver. Problem is that much silver doesn't exist above ground. So their fraud is exposed. Therefore the large banking cabal spends 10-15 billion a year shorting silver to protect their 200+ billion dollar fraud from back in the day.
That being said, we have to be aware of the large banks comfort zone, and be wise about taking profit when silver gets over 19/Oz. Thx again for the article. Boot

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