FT laments the lack of the gold market information it won't report

8:15a ET Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

An editor and columnist for the Financial Times, Dan McCrum, writes today in commentary briefly excerpted below that the price of gold can never be explained by anything other than fashion because there is no relevant information about gold pricing.

But if so, who is more at fault for that than the FT itself? For as far as GATA can determine, the newspaper has never put a critical question to any central bank about its surreptitious activity in the gold market and reported the results of such inquiry, though GATA often has provided the newspaper with extensive documentation of that activity, documentation summarized here:

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

McCrum's biography for the FT --

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/meet-the-team/dan-mccrum/

-- says: "Send him ideas or even call him up. He'll write about almost anything (except gold)." Now that he has waived that rule once, he should try waiving it again, this time attempting journalism.

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

* * *

Gold Can Only Ever Be a Fashion Victim

By Dan McCrum
Financial Times, London
Tuesday, October 11, 2016

A polite suggestion when the price of bullion shifts erratically up and down: read what follows, then never speak of gold again.

Why? Promotion, trading, conversation and analysis of the precious metal loved by talk radio hosts represents pretty much every weakness in the modern system of extracting fees from those with savings to invest.

Indeed, gold is the perfect medium for pseudo-analysis and the posture of investment authority because there is only ever one piece of relevant information -- the price at which gold is bought and sold today.

What this means is attempts to debunk any particular argument about the direction of that price are part of a larger failure. Engagement, even with noble motives, legitimises the sense there is serious discussion taking place, that with a bit more thought or insight it might be possible to predict the future price of gold.

There is no overarching theory, however. Every argument, every correlation with inflation, growth, bond prices or albatross sightings is only good for a while before it breaks down. ... Instead there is only fashion. ...

... For the remainder of the commentary:

https://www.ft.com/content/a2ad0ed6-817f-11e6-bc52-0c7211ef3198