Mixed notices for GATA from financial letter writers

9:20p ET Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

A couple of financial letter writers took note of GATA's work today, one favorably and one unfavorably.

The favorable notice came from Lawrence Tout, editor of the Midas Letter, in his essay, "The Risk of Catastrophic Deflationary Collapse," which you can find at the Midas Letter's Internet site here:

http://www.midasletter.com/commentary/091103_The-risk-of-catastrophic-de...

The unfavorable notice came from Brad Zigler, editor of the Hard Assets Investor site, whose essay "Incurious Gold Manipulation Theorists" makes a criticism your secretary/treasurer doesn't quite understand.

Citing data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Zigler seems to be arguing that the long positions in the gold futures market taken by speculative investment funds are as concentrated and manipulative as the short positions, most of which are held by two or three banks. But if those investment funds are much more numerous than the two or three banks that carry most of the gold futures short positions, then, by definition, the long position is not concentrated or potentially manipulative at all. The long position appears to be held by many independent actors, while most of the short position appears to be held by just a couple of actors -- and a couple of actors that, as major banks, are likely primary dealers with a special private relationship with the Federal Reserve.

In any case GATA would love for the CFTC to identify all gold futures longs and shorts. The list of shorts would indeed be a short one but much more interesting.

Further, the criticism made of Zigler in GATA Dispatches this July -- http://www.gata.org/node/7547 and http://www.gata.org/node/7627 -- involved his failure to examine and respond to much of the documentation GATA has produced showing largely surreptitious central bank intervention in the gold market.

Since July GATA has disclosed the Federal Reserve's admission that it has gold swap arrangements with foreign banks that it does not want the public or the markets to know about:

http://www.gata.org/node/7819

GATA would be grateful if Zigler and other market analysts expressed to the Fed some curiosity about those gold swap arrangements.

But if Zigler really thinks that the long positions in gold futures are as concentrated as the short positions, there may not be much point for him to examine anything else.

You can find Zigler's new commentary at the Hard Assets Investor site here:

http://www.hardassetsinvestor.com/component/content/article/3/1841-incur...

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

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