Midas commentary for March 1, 2000

10:15p EST Tuesday, February 29, 2000

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Here's a letter sent today to three reporters at
The Wall Street Journal by GATA Chairman Bill
Murphy. Please post it as seems useful.

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

* * *

February 29, 2000

To: Gregory Zuckerman, John Conner, and Charles Casparino
The Wall Street Journal
New York, New York

From: Bill Murphy, Chairman
Chairman, Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Dear Gregory, John, and Charles:

It has come to my attention that you were besieged with
emails after the editor-in-chief of the Gold-Eagle
website, I.M. Vronsky, sent you an email congratulating
you for your investigative reporting of the T-Bill
market. As I understand it, Vronsky suggested that you
also investigate the manipulation of the gold market,
and the followers of his web site have urged you on.

As chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee
Inc. (GATA), I think I know a great deal about this
subject and invite you to look into what we believe
will prove up to be one of the great financial scandals
in American history.

This is a complex situation and cannot be articulated
with quot;sound-bitequot; wording in a letter to you. But I
have 1 1/2 years' worth of documentation on the
manipulation of the gold market and would be happy to
share my efforts should you be interested in pursuing
this matter.

On March 29 I will be a guest speaker at the Committee
for Monetary Research and Education's spring dinner
meeting in New York, and my topic is quot;The Gold Market
Mystery.quot; Also speaking at that dinner will be Owen F.
Humpage of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Tracy
G. Herrrick, chief investment strategist of Jefferies amp;
Co. Inc.; James J. Leisenring, vice chairman of the
Financial Accounting Standards Board; Martin Mayer, the
prolific author of financial books; and former U.S.
Rep. Henry J. Reuss, a former House Banking Committee
chairman.

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee extends an
invitation to all of you to be our guests at that
dinner so that you can become better acquainted with
the evidence of our claims.

In the meantime there is much that can be accomplished
if you have the inclination. My colleague Chris Powell,
GATA secretary/treasurer, is sending you two articles
from the British press for your perusal. One was
written by acclaimed Financial Times columnist Barry
Riley; the other is from The Economist.

From the Feb. 12 FT article: quot;The gold manipulation
might well have started out as a minor smoothing
operation that got out of control.quot;

From the article in The Economist: quot;Until recently it
has been easy to dismiss them (gold bugs) as flat-
earthers, clinging to outdated ideas. Now, however, it
is harder to explain why the gold price remains so
low.quot;

Powell is also sending you GATA's center-spread open
letter, published in the Dec. 9 issue of Roll Call, to
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury
Secretary Lawrence Summers. In that letter we asked
both men to answer 11 specific questions about possible
gold market activity by the Fed and the Treasury.

Thus far Greenspan has responded to GATA's questions
through U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, who made a
similar request in GATA's behalf. We were told in
writing by Senator Lieberman that the Treasury
Department was to respond to us by February 22, but to
date we have not received that response.

GATA strongly believes that the gold market has been
manipulated for at least the past couple of years by
certain bullion banks -- mostly headquartered in New
York -- and a certain facet of U.S. officialdom.

I operate a financial web site,
www.LeMetropoleCafe.com, and have documented much of
GATA's findings over the past 18 months. This material
can be found in the library at that web site. It is my
pleasure to offer you a complementary press membership
to quot;the Cafe.quot; If you care to look further into this
issue, I can identify some of the more important
commentary about the manipulation. That commentary is
extensive and detailed.

Many other members of Congress also are requesting
answers to GATA's questions from the Treasury in behalf
of their outraged constituents. Our next step is to
request a full congressional investigation into the
gold market manipulation, which, we believe, has
greatly benefited a number of New York financial
institutions at the expense of so many unsuspecting
others.

If you think we are mad because our investments have
done poorly, you are correct. We are upset because we
have invested in a game that was fraudulently rigged
against us. In hindsight we never had a chance. In the
meantime, the quot;in-the-knowquot; crowd was borrowing gold at
1 percent gold lease rates, selling the gold, and
investing the proceeds in all kinds of investments,
thereby making a fortune.

I am a former professional athlete (starting wide
receiver with the Boston Patriots in 1968) and thus I
am used to being banged around by some pretty big
characters. I did not mind that because I knew what I
was getting into and knew I was playing on a level
playing field. The referees were not fixing the games
against us.

The gold market has been rigged in a clandestine manner
for some time now. If this was the athletic arena, the
cry quot;foulquot; would be greater than that of the Chicago
Black Sox scandal of baseball lore.

Yes, we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it
any more. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has been
written up by financial press all over the world. But
there has hardly been any mention of us in the U.S
press. When it comes to financial issues that take on
the powerful financial and political crowd, the United
States appears to be not that much different than the
Chinese in suppressing controversial insights. Last
June I had lunch in New York with all the wire services
and one of your reporters, and followed that up that
meeting by sending them voluminous information. Still
not one will even acknowledge GATA's existence or the
story we have to tell.

Alan Greenspan responds to us, but not the U.S. press.
What gives?

I look forward to meeting you in New York at the Union
Club if you can make the CMRE Dinner Meeting.

All the best,

BILL MURPHY
Chairman, Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.