Dear Jim,

I have had that utmost respect for you and your research for many years. It transcended most of the pabulum emanating from Wall Street. Therefore, it was deeply disturbing to read the drivel Howard L. Simons wrote on September 22 in a piece titled, "Is Gold Wrong?" How you would allow such nonsense out of your shop with your firm’s name on it is beyond me? Clearly, Mr. Simons knows little, to next to nothing about the gold market.

However, the reason I am taking the time to write this and contact you is to set the record straight re two of his comments:

*"Yes, there are some who still see evil conspiratorial manipulations behind every central bank sale or lease of reserves, but we can dismiss this fringe for what it is. Dogs bark at intruders and moving cars; this crowd can make pointless noise sitting alone in a darkened room."

While never thinking of myself as a gold bug in the past, I surely am one now. Mr. Simons animosity towards those who really understand what gold really stands for is apparent in his opening quote of his pitiful commentary.

As to the second point, Mr. Simons clearly is referring to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA). We have been called "the fringe" for more than six years now. Our evidence reveals that the gold market has been nothing but a conspiracy for nearly 10 years. The perpetrators to include certain bullion banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, the Fed, the US Treasury, and the BIS. And finally, this well orchestrated manipulation (in violation of US anti-trust laws) was carried out by a surreptitious "leasing scheme." So much so that the central banks have less than half of the 32,000 tonnes of gold they say they have.

The reason gold is now taking off in all currencies is because The Gold Cartel is gradually hitting the wall finding enough clandestine central bank gold to lease to meet surging gold demand.

While your Mr. Simons was denigrating what fringe GATA has uncovered, allow me to present some other commentary of the past week regarding this matter:

*Martin Hennecke, a senior manager at independent investment adviser Bridgewater Ltd said the following in a Bloomberg interview:

On central banks gold reserves:

``Almost every time the price of gold rises there's a debate about how much the central banks hold. All the central banks plus the IMF together hold gold worth $400 billion, that's less than the U.S. new debt issuance in a six-month period. So that's not much. And it's said that about half of gold reserves on the central banks' books have in reality already been sold via gold leasing.''

Jim,
I have known head honcho of Bridgewater, Ray Dalio, since 1975.

*Juerg Kiener of SwissAsia Capital spoke the GATA line on CNBC Asia this past week. He stated quite categorically that HALF the central bank gold had either been sold short or leased into the market and the current rise in the gold price could not be put down as speculation - perhaps shorts beginning to cover.

He also made the comment on stupid central bank policies of leasing out their most valuable asset at .5% also spoke of the gold oil ratio currently about 6 historically 17 and expects the gold oil ratio to settle somewhere in the middle.

***

On August 8^th and 9^th GATA held a historic gold conference for "the fringe" in Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, Canada. It was attended by delegates from 14 countries including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. One of the delegates was Andrey Bykov of Moscow (an economic advisor to President Putin), who chose to come to the "fringe conference" rather than go to the long-standing mainstream gold conference in Perth Australia. If you would like to know who Mr. Bykov is, please do a Google Search.

Allow me to introduce some of the presenters at this conference with some background of their "fringe" credentials:

Hugo Salinas Price – One of the most distinguished gentlemen in all of Mexico who is leading the fight to make silver legal tender in his country. Opinion polls show 96% of the people backing his proposal.

John Embry – Chief Investment Strategist at Sprott Asset Management in Toronto and one of the most highly regarded and liked men in the gold industry.

James Turk – The author of the "Coming Collapse of the Dollar" published by Doubleday and a former Middle East Chase banker.

Bob Landis – Princeton and Harvard Law School. A securities attorney who claimed at Gold Rush 21 GATA had already proved its case and it was time to move on.

John Brimelow – Stanford Business School grad who understood and documented the importance of the Indian gold market (and their true surging demand for gold) WAY ahead of ANYONE else.

Reg Howe – Harvard Law graduate who sued the entire Gold Cartel by himself in Boston Federal Court. Reg has exposed the gold fraud by pointing how out the BIS gold derivatives positions have not gone down even has hedgers have reduced their forward sale positions by more than 2,000 tonnes.

Antal Fekete – Both Hugo Salinas Price and Eric Sprott have stated that Antal, who hails from Hungary, has one of the finest economic minds they have ever encountered.

Chris Powell – GATA Treasurer/Secretary and editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut. No finer "fringe man" anywhere in the world.

Catherine Austin Fitts – former managing director of Dillon Read and number two at HUD in the Bush 1 Administration. Fringe???

JP Shoemacher – delivered the best speech of all at Gold Rush 21 for Ferdi Lips, who could not make it because of an accident in Switzerland. Ferdi, a former "fringe" Rothchilds banker in Zurich, who eventually founded his own bank (Bank Lips), has written four books on gold and is revered all over the world. Ferdi is one class act.

Jim, to back up what I have laid out to you, here are some pictures from GATA’s Gold Rush 21 conference, which feature the above "fringe" gentlemen and ladies.

I wish you the best Jim, however, this sort of inane nonsense Mr. Simons put out in the public domain is going to come back and haunt you. It is so beneath your normal work, but typical of those who can’t stand the "gold bugs."

Best regards,
Bill Murphy