Martin Armstrong gets locked up before he talks

11:30p EST Wednesday, January 12, 2000

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

More progress for us today.

A friend of GATA's in Illinois reported receiving from
the office of the speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives, Dennis Hastert, who is a
representative from Illinois, the same plain-paper
answers to some of GATA's questions that were
provided by the Federal Reserve to a GATA friend
in Florida. So we've come to the attention of the
speaker's office.

Even more interesting is the commentary below, aired
today by the British Broadcasting Corp. Something's
fishy and the world is starting to sense it.

Please post this as seems useful.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

British Broadcasting Corp.
January 12, 2000

There have been some surprising price movements on the
gold market lately. The BBC's Rodney Smith investigates....

Something's amiss in the Kingdom of Gold -- again.

It looks on the face of it as though at least one
European central bank has defied the gold industry and
pressed ahead with sales of gold.

Where have the ECB's gold reservers disappeared to?

The Dutch central bank says it sold three tonnes of
gold in the week between Christmas and the new year. It
went largely unnoticed in a market that was
concentrating like everyone else on the possibility of
millennium bug damage. Associated with this
information, the European Central Bank published
figures showing that its gold reserves at the end of
December were down 91 million euros to 114.75 billion
euros -- due to gold sales by a central bank.

So what was happening?

The Dutch point out that, like the Bank of England,
they have a standing plan to sell gold. They are
disposing of 100 tonnes by the end of September, as
part of an overall plan to sell 300 tonnes of gold from
reserves over five years.

The Swiss have a similar plan, yet to be implemented.

The Dutch, though, have opted not to sell at open
auction like the Bank of England, believing that covert
sales are less destabilising to the market.

The Dutch also clarify that their gold sales do not
breach the pact by 15 European central banks. They told
the World Gold Council and the gold producers in
September not that they would abandon gold sales but
that they would limit disposals to 2,000 tonnes over
five years, and 400 tonnes a year.

Much more suspicious, and there are few minds more open
to suspicion at present than in the bullion market, are
those who believe that the Dutch may have leased some
of this gold to big producers in trouble back in
October, after persuasion by the Federal Reserve.

That was when the second Bank of England quarterly sale
of 25 tonnes was followed by a sudden surge in the gold
price, leaving some gold producers that had sold
forward dangerously exposed. The Bank of England has
been coming under pressure for some months from small
gold producers that believe it may have been
manipulating the market to support some of the big gold
producers in trouble -- to the disadvantage, say they
small producers, of themselves.

So far replies by the bank have been opaque.

But the bank may have to take requests for greater
clarification more seriously soon.

A North American group is preparing what it warns will
be a landmark lawsuit -- against the U.S. Federal
Reserve Board, allegedly for colluding with other
central banks in supporting big gold producers that
were caught short in October.

Suddenly, gold is fun again. Watch this space.