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GATA Chairman Bill Murphy''s speech to the 2004 New Orleans Investment Conference
5:48p CT Sunday, November 14, 2004
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
GATA's fund-raising lunch at the conclusion of the
New Orleans Investment Conference today was a
success. At least we seem to have covered our costs
while meeting many old and new friends and spreading
the word of the manipulation of the gold market.
GATA is especially grateful to Brien Lundin of
Jefferson Direct Inc. and editor of Gold Newsletter
for helping to arrange and publicize our event, and
to Frank Veneroso, global market strategist for
Allianz Dresdner; Sprott Asset Management
President John Embry; and GoldMoney proprietor
James Turk for their participation.
GATA Chairman Bill Murphy's address to the
conference will be posted shortly at the GATA
Internet site and an alert about that will be
sent to you promptly. In the meantime, my own
remarks to the GATA lunch today are appended.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
Remarks by Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
Fund-Raising Lunch
New Orleans Investment Conference
New Orleans Sheraton Hotel
Sunday, November 14, 2004
People often write to me to complain about the gold price.
I usually reply that GATA is doing what we can and, to
cheer them up, send them a link to the one-year chart
of the gold price at Kitco.com.
Or if they're really depressed I tell them my favorite story
about Groucho Marx. It's a true story.
Groucho became a star in the 1920s but he lost everything
in the crash of 1929 and was torn up about it for years.
One day in the '30s he was sitting in a bar in Manhattan
having some drinks with a friend from vaudeville days, Fred,
and grousing about all the things he couldn't do now because
of the fortune he had lost in the market.
Fred tried to console Groucho by telling him that things could
be worse. After all, Fred remarked, they were alive and had
their health but his brother, Morty, had just died after a life
full of trouble. "You know, Morty lost three fingers in a bicycle
accident when he was 5," Fred said. "Then he lost most of his
hearing when he was 12 and got the measles. His fiance broke up
with him two weeks before their wedding. How awful that was!
And then he had diabetes at 29."
Groucho wasn't having any of it; he was still thinking about the
forture he lost in the market.
"Diabetes at 29?" he said. "That's nothing. I had Radio at 104!"
I used to think that the moral of this story was to be grateful
for what you have. Now I think that its moral -- Diabetes at 29,
Radio at 104 -- is:Get out of pharmaceutical AND tech stocks
and into gold.
But the biggest complainer of them all is my own partner, GATA
Chairman Bill Murphy. Every night about 9 Eastern time, just
when I've shooed my family off to bed and I've sat down at my
computer to begin my second job -- answering complaints about
the gold price -- Bill calls me to ... complain about the gold
price.
"Did you see what those #@&%+@ did to us today," he asks.
Now at my regular job I usually keep the Kitco, BullionDesk, and
NetDania charts running on my Internet screen all the time, but I
try to humor him anyway: "No, Bill, tell me exactly what they did."
If I'm lucky, I can get off the phone about 45 minutes later
because John Embry is calling BILL to complain.
If Murphy isn't complaining about the gold price, he's complaining
about the failure of the big mining companies to help GATA as
some of the little ones have. Why, why, why won't they do
anything to help us fight the government, he asks?
So I go over it with him again.
The government, I explain, has about 15,000 nuclear weapons, a
large number of infantry and assault divisions and attack aircraft,
special agents who are licensed to kill, the power to print
infinite amounts of legal tender, control of the public lands
on which the mining companies hold leases, and enough
environmental regulations to turn Nevada into a national park.
And here's Murphy shaking his fist at them and screaming, "Come
out, you #@&%+@, and show yourselves!"
That really was my contribution to this organization: Telling
Murphy, "Let's you and them fight." He took me up on it and
the rest is history.
I don't know how it turns out -- probably badly for them -- but
it has meant my accidental discovery of the secret knowledge
of the universe and so I am grateful to everyone here for
helping me along in that through GATA.
Since we ran GATA's flag up the pole six years ago we've
attracted some great minds and researchers seemingly out
of nowhere and found that we weren't alone in sensing that
something was terribly wrong about the markets and the
whole monetary system. What a miracle of subversion the
Internet is, for none of us in GATA would have made
contact with each other without it. More importantly, we
have struck some blows against the bad guys all out of
proportion to our numbers and resources -- so much so
that it seems that in the last year or so prevailing opinion
in the precious metals business has turned heavily in our
direction.
This thing is bigger than gold, bigger than interest rates,
bigger than all the currencies and the markets put
together. It's a matter of whether the world will even HAVE
markets and whether the value of labor and capital and all
things will be set democratically and openly by the many
or arbitrarily and secretly by the few for their own benefit.
Some of us have purchased or have been wearing those beautiful
gold bug pins that Brien Lundin has had made using the
William McKinley presidential campaign pin of 1896 as a
model. I was for William Jennings Bryan and the silver
bugs that year and think that Bryan's bigger point is as
compelling today as it was then, and that it is, indeed,
the essence of GATA's own work.
"When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb
your business interests," Bryan said, "we reply that you
have disturbed OUR business interests by YOUR action.
We say to you that you have made too limited in its
application the definition of a businessman.
"The man who is employed for wages is as much a
businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country
town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel
in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store
is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York.
The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day,
begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the
application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of
this country creates wealth is as much a businessman as
the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon
the price of grain.
"The miners who go a thousand feet into the earth or climb
2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding
places the precious metals to be poured into the channels
of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial
magnates who in a back room corner the money of the world.
"We come to speak for this broader class of businessmen."
With your help we'll continue to try to speak for them.
----------------------------------------------------
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----------------------------------------------------
RECOMMENDED INTERNET SITES
FOR DAILY MONITORING OF GOLD
AND PRECIOUS METALS
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Free sites:
http://www.cbs.marketwatch.com
http://www.capitalupdates.com/
http://www.silver-investor.com
http://www.thebulliondesk.com/
http://www.goldismoney.info/index.html
http://www.minersmanual.com/minernews.html
http://www.a1-guide-to-gold-investments.com/euro-vs-dollar.html
http://www.investmentrarities.com
http://www.kuik.com/KH/KH.html
(Korelin Business Report -- audio)
http://www.plata.com.mx/plata/home.htm
(In Spanish)
http://www.plata.com.mx/plata/plata/english.htm
(In English)
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/
Subscription sites:
http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/
http://www.investmentindicators.com/
http://www.interventionalanalysis.com
Eagle Ranch discussion site:
http://os2eagle.net/checksum.htm
Ted Butler silver commentary archive:
http://www.investmentrarities.com/
----------------------------------------------------
COIN AND PRECIOUS METALS DEALERS
WHO HAVE SUPPORTED GATA
AND BEEN RECOMMENDED
BY OUR MEMBERS
Blanchard & Co. Inc.
909 Poydras St., Suite 1900
New Orleans, Louisiana 70112
888-413-4653
http://www.blanchardonline.com
Centennial Precious Metals
3033 East 1st Ave., Suite 403
Denver, Colorado 80206
www.USAGold.com
Michael Kosares, Proprietor
US (800) 869-5115
Canada 1-800-294-9462
European Union 00-800-2760-2760
Australia 0011-800-2760-2760
cpm@usagold.com
Colorado Gold
222 South 5th St.
Montrose, Colorado 81401
www.ColoradoGold.com
Don Stott, Proprietor
1-888-786-8822
Gold@gwe.net
El Dorado Discount Gold
Box 11296
Glendale, Arizona 85316
http://www.eldoradogold.net
Harvey Gordin, President
Office: 623-434-3322
Mobile: 602-228-8203
harvey@eldoradogold.net
Investment Rarities Inc.
7850 Metro Parkway
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55425
http://www.gloomdoom.com
Greg Westgaard, Sales Manager
1-800-328-1860, Ext. 8889
gwestgaard@investmentrarities.com
Kitco
178 West Service Road
Champlain, N.Y. 12919
Toll Free:1-877-775-4826
Fax: 518-298-3457
and
620 Cathcart, Suite 900
Montreal, Quebec H3B 1M1
Canada
Toll-free:1-800-363-7053
Fax: 514-875-6484
http://www.kitco.com
Lee Certified Coins
P.O. Box 1045
454 Daniel Webster Highway
Merrimack, New Hampshire 03054
www.certifiedcoins.com
Ed Lee, Proprietor
1-800-835-6000
leecoins@aol.com
Miles Franklin Ltd.
3015 Ottawa Ave. South
St. Louis Park, Minn. 55416
1-800-822-8080 / 952-929-1129
fax: 952-925-0143
http://www.milesfranklin.com
Contacts: David Schectman,
Andy Schectman, and Bob Sichel
Missouri Coin Co.
11742 Manchester Road
St. Louis, MO 63131-4614
info@mocoin.com
314-965-9797
1-800-280-9797
http://www.mocoin.com
Resource Consultants Inc.
6139 South Rural Road
Suite 103
Tempe, Arizona 85283-2929
Pat Gorman, Proprietor
1-800-494-4149, 480-820-5877
Metalguys@aol.com
Swiss America Trading Corp.
15018 North Tatum Blvd.
Phoenix, Arizona 85032
http://www.swissamerica.com
Dr. Fred I. Goldstein, Senior Broker
1-800-BUY-COIN
FiGoldstein@swissamerica.com
----------------------------------------------------
HOW TO HELP GATA
If you benefit from GATA's dispatches, please
consider making a financial contribution to
GATA. We welcome contributions as follows.
By check:
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
c/o Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer
7 Villa Louisa Road
Manchester, CT 06043-7541
USA
By credit card (MasterCard, Visa, and
Discover) over the Internet:
http://www.gata.org/creditcard.html
By GoldMoney:
http://www.GoldMoney.com
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
Holding number 50-08-58-L
Donors of $750 or more will, upon request,
be sent a print of Alain Despert's colorful
painting symbolizing our cause, titled "GATA."
GATA is a civil rights and educational
organization under the U.S. Internal Revenue
Code and contributions to it are tax-deductible
in the United States.
