Brad Zigler: Another Monday, another gold manipulation notion

10:28 ET Monday, February 22, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

In commentary posted today at Hard Assets Investor, Managing Editor Brad Zigler quickly replies with gross misrepresentation to his own publication's recent interview with Andrew Schectman of coin and bullion Miles Franklin Ltd., which was called to your attention today (http://www.gata.org/node/8360).

At issue most with Zigler is Barrick Gold's famous motion to dismiss Blanchard & Co.'s anti-trust lawsuit against Barrick and its bullion bank, JPMorgan Chase, in U.S. District Court in New Orleans in 2003. GATA has maintained that Barrick's motion was in effect a confession to the gold price suppression scheme. But Zigler writes: "There's no confession to be found. The language used in Barrick's motion to describe the alleged scheme was, in fact, recitation of the plaintiff's very own complaint, used to lay groundwork for the defendants' argument. That's citation, not confession."

In fact the Barrick motion, which you can find here --

http://www.gata.org/files/BarrickConfessionMotionToDismiss.pdf

-- goes far beyond mere recitation of the plaintiff's complaint. Especially important is this simple assertion of Barrick's own position at the top of Page 8:

"The central banks, the absent bullion banks, and the absent gold producers each have significant interests in this action." And it is Barrick, not the plaintiff Blanchard, that claims and elaborates on the supposed sovereign immunity of the central banks against lawsuit.

Zigler also misleads by omission. He writes, "In the end, JPMorgan Chase was dismissed from the suit and Blanchard ended up settling, under undisclosed terms, with Barrick." Zigler neglects to note that settlement resulted only after U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan dismissed Barrick's motion, specifically rejecting Barrick's sovereign immunity claim.

Here's the decisive exchange in court between the judge and Barrick's lawyer, reported to you by GATA on June 10, 2003 (http://www.gata.org/node/1858):

"The Court: How would those contracts be challenged, under your theory that everybody has to be involved? Because, how do you get jurisdiction over everybody?

"Mr. Wegener: You can't.

"The Court: So you all can just tally-ho and do anti-competitive stuff? ... So the idea is, if you get enough people involved in a monopoly, then you're immune from litigation?

"Mr. Wegener: Well, I don't think it's quite that. ...

"The Court: And you're saying it's not possible to bring everybody in?

"Mr. Wegener: Yeah, I think you can't bring the central banks in, because they're immune. You can't bring in all the bullion banks, because they're beyond the jurisdiction of the court. ...

"The Court: I mean, if what you say is correct, then it sounds like the legal remedy is for individual plaintiffs, like, say, Blanchard, to go to the United States court, like he's done here, and go after J.P. Morgan. And then wherever these other entities are, to go to those courts, in those countries, in those locales, and try to seek the same relief. ... But I'm very much troubled by the end result of your argument, which is to the effect that if an outfit is large enough and involves enough people, enough entities, then they can kind of do what they want. ... But I just don't find it possible to think that something could -- if, in fact there is an anti-trust violation going on here -- that because it involves so many powerful entities from all around the world, therefore it's going to be immune from being challenged. That's, as we say, not acceptable.

"Mr. Wegener: Uh-huh.

"The Court: If that's the logical result of your argument, then I'm going to have to find some other way to deal with it than that."

Nor does Zigler note that Barrick itself has never disputed GATA's characterization of the company's motion as a confession, or that immediately after settling secretly with Blanchard, Barrick announced that it would stop hedging its gold production.

Zigler's commentary is headlined "Another Monday, Another Gold Manipulation Notion" and you can find it at Hard Assets Investor here:

http://www.hardassetsinvestor.com/component/content/article/3/2008-anoth...

Of course with his headline Zigler means to be sarcastic rather than sincere, for if he meant to be sincere he could spent quite a few Mondays addressing the 15 or so other documented admissions of the gold price suppression scheme that are found in the "Documentation" section of GATA's Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

Among these are admissions from four former chairmen of the Federal Reserve: Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, Arthur Burns, William McChesney Martin, much of the material drawn from the minutes of meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee, testimony to Congress, and Fed archives. Then there is the most recent admission from the Fed, Fed Governor Kevin M. Warsh's disclosure last September 17 that the Fed has gold swap agreements with foreign banks that the public must not be permitted to see:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedResponse-09-17-2009.pdf

The Fed can rely on Zigler's lack of curiosity about these things even while he supervises a publication supposedly devoted to the assets whose prices the government long has been suppressing. But GATA hopes to prompt curiosity among more ambitious journalists, and you can help to spread the word.

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

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