Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Let's welcome fund manager and market analyst Mike "Mish" Shedlock to the growing ranks of those who once dismissed complaints of gold market manipulation but who now find sanctuary behind admissions that "everything is manipulated."

In his latest commentary, headlined "Reader Question: Is Gold Manipulated?" --

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/08/reader-question-is-go...

-- Shedlock dutifully disparages GATA before acknowledging some curiosity about gold's recent "middle-of-the-night plunges at illiquid times."

"It would not surprise me one bit," Shedlock writes, "if the market makers manipulated gold to its previous high with the GATA advocates screaming all the way that the MMs were holding the price down.

"It's tiring to hear the exact same manipulation charges no matter what gold is doing. And such screaming has gone on for years, even though gold has quadrupled since 2000 (certainly far more than the major stock market indices).

"That said, someone sure benefits from these the middle-of-the-night plunges at illiquid times. So put me in the group wondering who that is, and what if any laws were violated in doing so. And if laws were violated, let's have an accounting, as well as a look at the laws."

Of course Shedlock is misleading here, since GATA has not been complaining about ordinary market makers in gold but rather about largely surreptitious intervention in the gold market by central banks.

Shedlock is additionally misleading by failing to acknowledge that this intervention and a policy of price suppression particularly could be implemented with a gradually rising gold price to maintain what central banks like to call "orderly" currency markets, which are something other than free markets.

But as Shedlock writes, yes, "let's have an accounting." Could we start with central banks, and could Shedlock assist in that accounting by pursuing these questions?:

-- Are central banks in the gold market surreptitiously or not?

-- If central banks are in the gold market surreptitiously, is it just for fun -- for example, to see which central bank's trading desk can make the most money by cheating the most investors -- or is it for policy purposes?

-- If central banks are in the gold market for policy purposes, are these the traditional purposes of defeating a potentially competitive world reserve currency, or have these purposes expanded?

-- If central banks, creators of infinite money, are surreptitiously trading a market, how can it be considered a market at all, and how can any country or the world ever enjoy a market economy again?

Extensive documentation that central banks are surreptitiously trading the gold market not merely to make a little money on the sly but to control the monetary metal's price and interest rates and to protect their currencies and government bonds has been summarized and linked here:

http://www.gata.org/node/14839

None of this is mere "conspiracy theory," as Shedlock disparages complaints of gold market manipulation, though certainly conspiracy is involved when central bankers meet secretly to devise and implement a course of action about the markets, as they frequently do. This is conspiracy fact, and to test it Shedlock needs only to try to attend the meetings of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the board of the European Central Bank, the board of the International Monetary Fund, the board of the Bank for International Settlements, and the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee, among others.

Rather this is all about longstanding government policy. Shedlock should try questioning central bankers about it. If he is really curious now and not just posturing his way out of an awkward position, their evasion might make him even more curious.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org

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 -- Published: Friday, 21 August 2015 | E-Mail  | Print  | Source: GoldSeek.com

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