You are here
Armstrong needn't research gold manipulation; he simply knows there isn't any
5:50p ET Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
The gold world is blessed with a few people who believe they know everything without having to do any research.
Of course there's Jeff Christian of CPM Group, who, no doubt pleasing the central banks and bullion banks among his clients, angrily denies complaints about manipulation of the gold market without ever addressing even one of the dozens of pieces of evidence.
Then there's Doug Casey of Casey Research, whose denials are starting to be contradicted by the grunt work of his own staff.
But the gold world's most convinced know-it-all may be market analyst Martin Armstrong, who lacks even an ounce of humility despite the ruin visited on him by years in federal prison on fraud and contempt charges.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Jim Sinclair Plans Seminar in Boston on Dec. 7
Gold advocate and mining entrepreneur Jim Sinclair will hold his next seminar from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, December 7, in the Boston suburb of Cambridge, Mass., at the Boston Marriott Cambridge at 50 Broadway in Cambridge. The admission fee will be $50. Details are posted at Sinclair's Internet site, JSMineSet, here:
http://www.jsmineset.com/2013/11/14/boston-qa-session-announced/
In commentary about today's abrupt decline in the gold price, headlined "Gold Manipulation or Lack of Liquidity?" --
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/11/20/gold-manipulation-or-lack-of-li...
Armstrong writes:
"All such extreme selloffs seem to be accompanied by allegations of manipulations. But rationally looking at this, the sellers will actually hurt themselves because they are not achieving the best possible price. Every manipulation I have witnessed in the metals has been driving the price up and spinning the story of shortages to get the people to buy" as the manipulators "sell into every high, and then the market crashes. You would not shoot a market here in this manner to make money. This is more indicative of liquidation based upon price action without regard to liquidity."
Just amazing. It's as if the great expert Armstrong has never heard about gold's negative correlation with currencies, real interest rates, and government bond prices, long established by academic literature, or about the oft-admitted interest of central banks in suppressing gold to support their currencies and bonds.
Mr. Armstrong, of course the many recent dumpings of gold contracts in the futures markets seem like no way to make money from selling gold -- because they have not been meant to make money from selling gold. Instead the objective has been to support currencies and bonds. Good grief!
Armstrong continues:
"There is no 'manipulation' organized to force the price down. This is simply a bear market and there has been steady liquidation of commodities in general. A manipulation is apparent only when that single commodity is moving counter-trend to the group."
Really, Mr. Armstrong?
Central banks trade in the gold market every day, directly and through their agent, the Bank for International Settlements, whose only members and clients are central banks. Bullion banks also trade in the gold market every day, often using gold leased from central banks, which lease gold precisely to control the market.
As Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified to Congress in 1998 --
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/1998/19980724.htm
-- "Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over the counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise."
Many other central bankers have publicly acknowledged surreptitious intervention in the gold market, and GATA has amassed much documentation of that surreptitious intervention here:
http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21
A recent summary of that documentation is here:
http://www.gata.org/node/13185
So did Armstrong survey the central banks and the bullion banks about their gold transactions today? Has he done so ever? Did they give him answers they were willing to have published and thus account for?
The staff of the International Monetary Fund conducted such a survey in 1999 and reported, if secretly, that central banks demand secrecy for their gold leases and swaps precisely to facilitate their surreptitious intervention in the gold and currency markets:
http://www.gata.org/node/12016
Maybe what happened today in the gold market was not surreptitious manipulation underwritten by central banks -- GATA certainly doesn't know particularly about today -- but on what basis does Armstrong know that it wasn't?
He doesn't say. He doesn't have to say. He's Martin Armstrong. As with Jeff Christian and Doug Casey, being Martin Armstrong is as good as knowing.
As for Armstrong's assertion that "a manipulation is apparent only when that single commodity is moving counter-trend to the group," Pacific Group's William Kaye quickly responded: "Gold is acting counter to its group, which would be other forms of portable wealth like rare diamonds, artwork, old maps, and even bitcoins. As a monetary metal gold often doesn't move in sync with industrial commodities."
Of course like Christian, Casey, and a few others, Armstrong considers himself too important to bother collecting and addressing evidence. He just pontificates -- and thus is useful only to his ego and those who profit from his spreading disinformation.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
Join GATA here:
Vancouver Resource Investment Conference
Vancouver Convention Centre West
Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer...
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006:
http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html
Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt:
Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:
http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal
Help keep GATA going
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
