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Financial Times sneers at monetary gold while touting old jewelry
6:08p ET Friday, December 8, 2023
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Count on the Financial Times to disparage gold and its advocates even when the newspaper is forced by price action to acknowledge that readers might have some interest in the monetary metal.
Today's anti-gold propaganda in the FT posing as an argument for a very limited form of gold ownership comes from Stuart Kirk, who is identified as a former portfolio manager. In an essay titled "The Best Way to Invest in Gold" --
https://www.ft.com/content/1ec4f363-87ae-4d20-a5a0-7d361725a3f7
-- Kirk touts gold jewelry, his wife being a jeweler.
Along the way, Kirk writes: "I rarely comment on gold. When journalists do, insane end-of-worlders leap from their bunkers to scream abuse. Fiat money is a sham. Governments can’t be trusted. Zombies are coming."
Yes, there are some "insane end-of-worlders" in the gold world But Kirk uses them as straw men. From his essay you wouldn't know that there are other advocates of the monetary metal who make quite different arguments -- advocates who include central bankers, who lately have buying much more monetary gold than jewelry.
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Kirk continues: Gold prices "now obey the laws of finance."
Really? Many central bankers have admitted, especially when they thought no one outside their fraternity was listening, that gold prices are heavily manipulated by central banks. One of those central bankers, William R. White, then head of the monetary and economic department of the Bank for International Settlements, told a BIS conference in June 2005 that a primary purpose of international central bank cooperation is "the provision of international credits and joint efforts to influence asset prices (especially gold and foreign exchange) in circumstances where this might be thought useful":
Indeed, the BIS actually advertises to potential central bank members that its services include surreptitious interventions in the gold market:
https://www.gata.org/node/11012
Kirk continues: "Because gold generates no income, therefore its price should rise when the yields on alternative low-default assets fall, and vice versa."
But like other forms of money, gold does generate income when it is loaned or leased. That is the rationale offered by central bankers for loaning and leasing their gold reserves -- to earn a little money on a supposedly dead asset. But Kirk already has dismissed central bankers with the "insane end-of-worlders."
Kirk goes on: "Nor are gold bugs completely mad: They at least stand a chance if Martians invade."
What of the many invasions and regime changes committed over the centuries by regular Earthlings, invasions and regime changes that impoverished millions of people who lacked gold to flee with? What of the thousands of people who survived such turmoil because they held gold in hand? Kirk doesn't give them even a footnote.
Kirk continues: "If you believe there is a risk we're going to hell in a handbasket, or global warming will turn downtown Denver into prime waterfront, it makes sense to allocate a portion of your investment portfolio to gold."
What if your fear is not having to take a ferry from Boulder to Colorado Springs but instead that governments will destroy their currencies to inflate away their unpayable debts, which has been done many times over the centuries? Kirk doesn't say, but maybe he thinks that fear of currency and debt devaluation makes you one of the "insane end-of-worlders" along with gold-buying central bankers.
Kirk concludes by describing at length how to get the best prices at jewelry auctions.
It's fine that, as Kirk writes, he rarely comments on gold, since he has little useful information to convey. But it's disgraceful that the Financial Times rarely if ever attempts serious journalism about gold and particularly about how and why certain governments and central banks long have strived to push gold out of the world financial system in favor of their own currencies, openly and surreptitiously intervening in markets to defeat competition and deceive investors on a cosmic scale.
Much of the documentation of this is summarized at GATA's internet site here:
https://www.gata.org/node/20925
That documentation was powerfully updated today with GATA consultant Robert Lambourne's report on the most recent secret interventions in the gold market undertaken by central banks through their broker, the BIS:
https://www.gata.org/node/22938
This documentation has been sent to FT editors and reporters many times in recent years and sometimes has been hand-delivered to them face-to-face in London. This installment will be sent along to them as well in the hope that someday the newspaper will have more respect for its readers and truth itself.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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