Another analyst predicts a big official revaluation of gold

9:24p ET Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

In commentary posted tonight at 321Gold, Stewart Thompson, editor of the Graceland Updates financial newsletter and a retired broker for Merrill Lynch, joins those who are predicting a coordinated, international, and massive upward revaluation of gold by central banks to devalue the dollar, stop the hoarding of cash, restart spending, and avert worldwide depression. Thompson acknowledges the need of central banks to control the gold market and expects, upon that revaluation, new controls on gold ownership if not quite confiscation. His commentary is headlined "Is President Obama Wearing a Giant Gold Mask?" and you can find it at 321Gold here:

http://www.321gold.com/editorials/thomson_s/thomson_s_011409.html

What may be the U.S. Treasury Department's most recent statement on confiscation of gold, silver, and related financial instruments can be found in an exchange of correspondence with GATA in 2005, reposted by GATA in 2007 here:

http://www.gata.org/node/5606

In short, the Treasury Department claims the power, under the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917, to prohibit during wartime the private possession of gold and silver bullion and to freeze ownership of gold and silver mining company shares, as well as the power, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and upon a presidential declaration of emergency, to seize or freeze any financial asset, not just those related to gold and silver.

The likelihood of such action by the Treasury is arguable, as are the prospects for compliance by the descendants of the men who fought at places like Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, Belleau Wood, Bastogne, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservior, and Khe Sahn. But in any case the Treasury's statement of policy is probably not what Francis Scott Key had in mind when he wrote that song about "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

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

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