The first gift

9:30p ET Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

-- Matthew 2:11

Matthew doesn't spell them out, so we can only guess at the reasons of the Magi. The first gift to the holy child was gold. But jewelry or monetary gold? The noble metal of sovereign kings, the wealth preserver of sovereign individuals, or the currency of the persecuted and the refugee, such as the child and his parents shortly would become? Scripture seems to affirm only gold's universality. But that is quite enough -- indeed, the whole point.

Those of us who pursue gold's ancient monetary purposes do not worship the cold, dead metal, no matter how beautiful its presentation; we are not idolaters. We pursue what the metal's monetary function advances: individual liberty, limited government, and fair dealing irrespective of nation or tribe. We would grant that to all regardless of whether this holiday means anything to them. And far from rooting for or betting on the end of civilization, as apologists for the current international monetary system accuse us of doing, we pursue a better day -- a day, for those who can envision it, with nice capital gains, to be sure, but capital gains that do not have to be spent on guns, ammunition, freeze-dried food, and ventilation equipment. For we like living above ground; we are not the gnomes of Zurich. And of course what has driven the world into the ground lately is not gold but a system of central banking that has sought to destroy gold. Gold, the gift of the Magi, increasingly looks like a big part of the world's way back up.

So merry Christmas to our Christian friends, happy Hanukkah to our Jewish friends, and fraternal greetings to all our other friends in the golden circle around the world. The Magi had their reasons and we have ours.

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

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