Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

GATA frequently writes to about two dozen journalists at mainstream financial news organizations about matters indicating manipulation of the monetary metals markets, alerting them to all new documentation and evidence we've discovered, so that none of those organizations can claim not to have known what was going on, only to have ignored it.

Of course seldom do we receive even an acknowledgment; the issue is simply a prohibited subject for mainstream financial journalism in the West. But GATA may be first to know when one of those journalists is on vacation or otherwise away from work for a prolonged time, as he'll set his e-mail account to "auto-respond" and we'll get an indirect acknowledgment that way.

Strangely, today one of those journalists included GATA in a request for comment on the Reuters report that the resignation of Deutsche Bank from the London gold and silver fixes would leave the gold fix with only four participants and the silver fix with only two:

http://www.gata.org/node/13963

Your secretary/treasurer provided such a comment, though he understood that he was more likely to win the grand prize in one of the national lotteries than to be quoted by that mainstream financial news organization complaining about gold and silver market manipulation. At GATA we go through the motions because it's our job, and because, just as the Infinite Monkey Theorem holds that an infinite number of monkeys given an infinite number of typewriters eventually will produce "King Lear" --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

-- maybe an infinite number of submissions of the biggest financial news story of the last century to an infinite number of mainstream financial news organizations eventually will get the story published, if only through computer error or sabotage.

So your secretary/treasurer replied to the mainstream financial journalist's request for comment as follows:

"It has always puzzled me why the peculiar mechanisms of the London gold and silver fixes have never been prosecuted under the U.K. Competition Act --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_Act_1998

-- insofar as no other markets operate this way, with participation so exclusive and secret. Somehow the world gets along OK without a daily price fix in oil, soybeans, pork bellies, and such controlled by a small number of banks conferring in secret. So why only gold and silver?

"Is it because gold and silver are effectively money and currencies that compete with government currencies and because, as a result, governments want to influence their prices in secret, through intermediaries providing cover, lest their market intervention be disclosed and the effect of the intervention thereby diminished?

"The secret March 1999 report of the staff of the International Monetary Fund suggests as much:

http://www.gata.org/node/12016

"That report says that Western central banks conceal their gold swaps and leases to facilitate their surreptitious interventions in the gold market. Presumably central bank gold is loaned to bullion banks participating in the London gold fix or to bullion banks using London fix banks as brokers. I would be surprised if there were no transactions or understandings involving silver between central banks and the banks operating the London silver fix as well.

"At least the U.S. government is specifically authorized by law, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 as amended, to intervene secretly in the gold and silver markets through the U.S. Treasury Department's Exchange Stabilization Fund:

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/international/ESF/Pages/esf-inde...

"So there can be no dispute that surreptitious intervention in the gold and silver markets by the U.S. government is at least contemplated and provided for.

"I'm not an expert in the British Treasury's equivalent of the ESF, the Exchange Equalization Account --

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmt-eea

-- but my understanding is that it's empowered to intervene secretly in the currency markets in the same way and for the same purposes.

"In any case, will anyone dispute that, as the number of participants in the daily silver fixing in London diminishes, competition diminishes too?

"Governments have to decide whether they want more competition and transparency in markets for the monetary metals or less competition and transparency. Less competition and transparency long have been their objectives."

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

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 -- Published: Wednesday, 30 April 2014 | E-Mail  | Print  | Source: GoldSeek.com

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