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GATA credited for exposing gold, silver market manipulation
By Adrian Douglas
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
In a report published yesterday and dispatched by GATA (http://www.gata.org/node/9577), Law360.com credits GATA with having been instrumental in making the world aware of the whistleblower Andrew Maguire, the watershed event that led to an avalanche of lawsuits against JPMorgan Chase and HSBC accusing them of illegally colluding to manipulate the silver market.
Maguire had warned the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission of silver market manipulations (http://www.gata.org/node/8466) but the CFTC had taken no action, so Maguire turned to GATA.
The public is under the false impression that all that is required to expose fraud and corruption is for a whistleblower to come forward. But in fact whistleblowers are typically ignored and marginalized until it is too late.
The world did not hear what Sherron Watkins had to say about Enron until the company had already collapsed. The world never knew of Harry Markopoulos until after Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme crashed and burned. The public did not hear of Cynthia Cooper until World.com collapsed, and Colleen Rowley's warnings to her bosses at the FBI about terrorist activities were not known until after September 11, 2001.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture:
World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon
Company Press Release, January 18, 2011
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy.
PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding.
Following the transaction:
-- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC.
-- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis.
-- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp.
-- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings.
Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000.
For the complete announcement, please visit:
http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php
On the other hand GATA has made history. For the first time the world was made aware of a financial market whistleblower before the fraud blew up and before the authorities took action against it. Now law firms are suing for damages even with the crime still in progress.
After he gave his evidence to the CFTC, Maguire expected to be invited to the commission's March 25, 2010, hearing on precious metals markets. At the last minute Maguire was refused an invitation. He was extremely frustrated and so he contacted me, a member of GATA's Board of Directors, and revealed the evidence he had given to the CFTC with respect to who is manipulating the gold and silver markets and how it is done.
It was evident that the CFTC was trying to ignore what was going on.
Consequently in his own testimony to the CFTC's hearing last March 25 GATA Chairman Bill Murphy revealed Maguire's warning to the commission and produced copies of the e-mail correspondence between Maguire and the CFTC's Enforcement Department, which had been met with total inaction. Murphy identified the ringleaders as JPMorgan Chase and HSBC.
Stunningly the financial journalists who attended the CFTC hearing did not want to talk to Murphy and me after these revelations. Interviews that had been arranged with GATA were mysteriously canceled. But the media blackouts failed to put the genie back in the bottle.
Major law firms clamored to talk to Maguire. Investors who had collectively lost billions of dollars because of precious metals market manipulation sought justice and compensation. Just days after CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton publicly stated that in his opinion certain entities had sought fraudulently to control and manipulate the price of silver, the litigation floodgates opened.
Like the Keystone Cops, the CFTC is still purportedly pursuing a silver market manipulation investigation that began in September 2008, while private law firms have already investigated and filed suit.
With Enron and World.com the public found out too late to sell its shares or, even better, to sell short the stocks involved in the frauds. But the case of the precious metals is an extraordinary opportunity that has never arisen before. Maguire's whistleblowing and the evidence of silver and gold price suppression were put on record by GATA in the office of the market regulator and beamed around the world by Webcast. Many law firms subsequently filed class-action lawsuits against JPMorgan and HSBC. And a CFTC commissioner confirmed that fraud had taken place and has urged that it be prosecuted.
The price action in the precious metals since March 25 last year shows that many investors are seizing this historic opportunity, investors including the nations of Russia, China, and India. A few market analysts are taking the ostrich approach, preferring to believe that Maguire does not exist, that GATA is just a bunch of conspiracy theorists, that these private law firms suing major bullion banks at their own expense are half crazy, and that CFTC Commissioner Chilton must be mistaken.
We can lament how it would have been nice to have shorted Enron, World.com, Bear Stearns, or Lehman Brothers, but we never really had the opportunity because by the time we knew about the frauds it was too late. If investors don't jump on the best investment opportunity in history and buy all the physical gold and silver they can afford, at least it can never be claimed that they couldn't have known about it.
Anybody who doesn't profit from the coming precious metals bonanza has only himself to blame.
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Adrian Douglas is publisher of the Market Force Analysis letter (www.MarketForceAnalysis.com) and a member of GATA's Board of Directors.
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Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property
Company Press Release, October 27, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:
-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.
-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.
-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.
Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.
"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."
For the company's full press release, please visit:
http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf
