Gartman urges government intervention in commodities markets

10:47p ET Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Everybody seems to have missed the important point about commodities letter writer Dennis Gartman's announcement that he's getting out of gold despite roaring commodities markets.

Among those missing the point was the Bloomberg News Service writer who reported Gartman's shift in position yesterday and whose story is appended here. For as her interview with Gartman disclosed, he wasn't as much giving up on gold as insisting that governments should intervene massively to stop the rise in commodities -- a strange position for a supposed free-marketeer.

While Gartman, after long disparaging suggestions that the gold market is manipulated, recently acknowledged the possibility, he does not yet seem to have fully recognized the incongruity between the smashing down of the monetary metals even as most commodities have soared. In any case, Gartman now desperately wants market manipulation, and of course the Bloomberg reporter, herself having disregarded the manipulation issue for years, sees nothing incongruous about this -- doesn't see the issue at all even when it slaps her in the face.

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

* * *

Gartman 'Abandoning Ship'
On Higher Gold Price

By Claudia Carpenter
Bloomberg News Service
Monday, April 21, 2008

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aGIh2dSXFlRk

Dennis Gartman, editor of the daily Gartman Letter, is "abandoning ship" on his positive gold outlook after three years, on expectations that efforts to contain food prices will curb demand for the metal as a hedge against inflation.

"Governments have to get together and stop the rise in grain prices. They will do something," Gartman said in a phone interview today from Norfolk, Virginia. "What if they come in and say you can't expand your positions anymore?"

Commodities are in their seventh years of gains, with oil rising above $117 a barrel for the first time and rice rallying for a sixth day. Gold lagged behind gains of most commodities in the past month, and is down 11 percent from a record on March 17.

This is the first time in three years that Gartman is not positive on gold, he said. Most of his subscribers, including large hedge funds and securities companies, probably won't sell gold for now, he said.

Gold has more than doubled in the past three years, and rose to a record $1,032.70 an ounce last month as some investors bought the metal as a hedge against faster inflation.

"The relative strength of the market has been waning since early this year, a circumstance that has bothered us but which we were willing to overlook so long as new highs were being made," Gartman wrote in his Gartman Letter today. "It has bounced today, and we shall sell that bounce and exit, entirely."

Gold for immediate delivery gained $3.29, or 0.4 percent, to $920.39 an ounce as of 11:59 a.m. in London.

* * *

GATA is grateful for financial contributions, which
are federally tax-deductible in the United States.