U.S. government moves to dismiss GATA/Howe lawsuit

By Bill Murphy, Chairman
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
March 15, 2001

It is becoming apparent that the Gold Cartel is going
to have to be blown out of the water.

Fortunately, that can be done easily by just exposing
the truth about gold via some transparency operations.
That is what the GATA Africa Gold Summit will be all
about.

My trip to the Prospectors and Developers Convention in
Toronto was much fun and very productive, as I met a
good number of sharp people and made new friends.

Of special note was Monday's dinner (March 12)
organized by Nick Ferris, president and CEO of
Claimstaker Resources (CLN), a junior exploration and
mining company with a North American focus.

Also attending were Don Whalen, chairman of High River
Gold Mines and chairman of the Canada-Russia Business
Forum; Driffield Cameron, vice president for
exploration, High River Gold Mines; Lou Wolfin,
president of Coral Gold; Ralph Braun, information
technology consultant; Brett Whalen, investment banker
for Dundee Securities; Dave Shaddrick, president of
Rubicon Resources; and Don Neville-Smith, president of
DN-S Insurance.

The gold world has been abuzz in recent months about
Jipangu Inc. David Mosher is president of High River
Gold Mines Ltd. and is Jipangu's North American
director. Jipangu Inc., headquartered in Tokyo, is a
private gold mining and investment company. Its
president is Tamisuke Matsufuji, who to this day is the
most successful bond salesman in the history of Salomon
Brothers. Matsufuji has become a famous contrarian
financial adviser who has authored five best-sellers in
Japan. In 1989 he wrote a book predicting the collapse
of Japanese stock and real estate markets. Talk about
great calls!

Now Matsufuji is predicting a new quot;golden agequot; and is
preparing accordingly via Jipangu -- a term for quot;Japanquot;
that was brought to the west by Marco Polo. It means
quot;island of goldquot; and arose from legends of the
Japanese rooftops covered in gold. Jipangu is the only
pure gold company in Japan and its goal is to become
one of the top 10 gold producers in the world. Jipangu
is becoming a vehicle for Japanese investors to
participate in the global gold market without currency
exposure and is focusing on bringing the gold industry
to the Asian investor.

Jipangu is accumulating gold assets around the world
and is concentrating on those firms that are gold
producers. Its holdings include 23 percent of High
River Gold, 26 percent of Claimstaker Resources, 22
percent of Cambior, a significant option to purchase
shares in Harmony Gold of South Africa, as well as
interests in other junior golds.

Nick Ferris and Don Whelan are enthused about Jipangu's
endorsement of their operations, and for good reason.

I had the pleasure of sitting next to Whelan during
dinner, and it was most enjoyable. He is a 30-year
softball-pitching IBM veteran who came out of semi-
retirement to oversee High River Gold (HRG:TSE). High
River is a Toronto-based junior gold producer that
intends to become a major global gold mining company.
It has an international focus with projects in New
Britannia, Manitoba, Canada; Buryat Republic, Russia;
and Burkina Faso, West Africa. High River owns 26
percent of JSC Buryatzoloto, the Russian company that
runs the Zun-Holba and Ironkinda mines and is one of
the few mining success stories in Russia. They are the
third largest gold producer in that country, as they
produced 127,000 ounces at $165 cash cost. There is
also a gold reserve of 1.8mm oz of 17g/tonne grade
(0.54oz/ton) with an additional resource of 3.6mm oz at
grade of 12g/tonne (0.38oz/ton).

Jipangu also owns 16 percent JSC Buryatzoloto outright.

Whelan, who has met Russian Premier Vladimir Putin
twice, thought the Russians might be interested in
attending the GATA Africa Gold Summit, as their natural
resource-rich country also has been hurt by the
manipulation of the gold market. So invitations will be
sent to the proper Russian officials via the
appropriate channels.

At the GATA hospitality suite in Toronto the next
evening, I handed a complete kit of GATA's findings to
Boris Aryev, chairman of the Mining Working Group of
the Canada-Russia Business Forum. It was most ironic to
us that we all could envision the headlines after an
important Russian official is interviewed by the press
following the summit: quot;Russians Seek Free Gold Market.quot;
quot;Russians Blast U.S. Banks and Government for
Communist-like Market Collusion.quot; quot;Russians Chide U.S.
Press for Censoring GATA and Covering Up Gold Story.quot;
quot;Russians Call for Gold Market Transparency and Fair
Play.quot;

The GATA hospitality suite on Tuesday night was mobbed,
and many impressive gold industry folk stopped by.
Geologist Keith Barron and his sidekick, Patrick
Anderson, deserve special thanks, as they ran the
affair very smoothly for the entire evening. Thanks
again, guys.

From Barron, who also did such a marvelous job
organizing my stay at the convention, I received this
message yesterday: quot;I caught the tail-end of a
presentation by Bob Bishop on the convention floor this
morning. He spent the first 15 minutes talking about
you and GATA and said, 'You may think these guys are
just into conspiracy theories, but I'm telling you
they're right and I'm 100 percent behind them.' Patrick
caught the whole thing.quot;

And a big thanks to the highly regarded Bishop of the
well-followed Gold Mining Stock Report.

On CNBC knocking gold bugs today: They are the same
characters who chuckled at Warren Buffet almost exactly
one year ago for his having lost his touch for not
understanding the new economy and the new reality for
stocks. That was the top of the stock market. This
ought to be the bottom for gold.

Reg Howe was going to the courthouse in Boston today to
pick up the response by the U.S. Treasury Department to
his lawsuit.

Word comes that international physical gold demand
surged late in the Comex trading session as gold
approached $260 per ounce. Somebody is getting it
right. From Tuesday's Morning Metal Monitor: quot;Gold is
called $3.30 lower this morning, as lease rates got
pummeled down to 4 percent late in the yesterday's New
York session as a single large lender entered the
market. With the stock market under siege, and a single
large lender knocking gold down, the conspiracy
theorists will have a field day speculating on the
identity of the lender.quot;

No market in history has performed like gold has in
recent years. Every single spike is clobbered by the
Gold Cartel, yet the gold industry and gold press
remain silent. That is why the GATA Africa Gold Summit
is needed so badly.

Invitations to the summit go out early next week.
Attendance will be limited to those receiving
invitations and is not for the public.

The U.S. stock market is one sick puppy. Today's action
was terrible and the coming days could be a nightmare
for the Wall Street whining crowd. It is pitiful the
way they are turning on their hero, Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan, as they beg for an ever-increasing interest
rate cut, the further the stock market sinks.

The way things are going, the market will swoon on
anything less than a 2 percent Fed fund rate cut on
March 20. As I have said for more than a year, there
will be a backlash against Wall Street the likes of
which this country has never seen when the public
realizes that it is not going to get its money back and
that it has been had by the greedy touts of Wall
Street. It is not going to be a pretty picture.

We all know that they are bashing gold for the reasons
they have bashed gold every time there is a crisis.
They are covering up the financial condition of the big
banks, the economic policies of the Clinton
administration, and their ruinous short gold positions
for which they have no escape.

The good news for our camp is that they are running out
of bullets. The quot;collapsingquot; one-month lease rate is
still three times higher than normal. Meanwhile, the
Aussie dollar closed at 49.2 cents today, which will
put further pressure on the overly hedged Aussie gold
producers when gold rallies in dollars.

The days of The Gold Cartel are numbered. If a chaotic
financial market scene does not get them, the Howe/GATA
complaint will. And if not the lawsuit, the GATA Africa
Gold Summit will. The quot;enveloping hornquot; is doing its
thing. You can count on it.