Writing for MineWeb, David Levenstein of Lakeshore Trading in Rivonia, South Africa, has been persuaded by the attack on gold amid the Swiss franc’s devaluation that central banks are intervening surreptitiously to push the metal’s price down. Levenstein writes:

“With regard to the recent selloff in gold, I am absolutely certain that there is a great deal of truth to the commentaries that suggest that this selloff was engineered by central banks and their agents the bullion banks in an attempt to thwart the upward momentum in gold and thus take the spotlight away from the yellow metal.

“In a blatant attempt to drive the price of gold down, some large sell orders came onto the futures market during the time when the market was least liquid. You have to ask the question: Why would anyone sell at the most illiquid times? The seller was obviously determined to move the market in the direction he wanted and was not interested in the least in attempting to liquidate at the best possible price. Then, as the prices of equities, commodities, and most currencies plunged, it appears that certain hedge funds that were taking a beating in their stock positions used the profits made in gold and silver to cover those losses. This added to the downward momentum. The cherry on the top of the cake was the action taken by the CME. They hiked the margin for gold by 21 percent and in a falling market. Yet while the S&P plummeted, the CME reduced margins for this contract by 33 percent.”

Levenstein’s commentary is headlined “Politicians, Financial Regulators, Banking Officials, and Gold” and you can find it at MineWeb

Despite the world now beginning to wake up to Gov/Bank manipulation of precious metals and financial markets:

UBS AG was granted limited immunity related to an alleged conspiracy to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). LIBOR is a benchmark used to set short-term interest rates around the world. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently investigating banks that assist the British Bankers’ Association in setting the LIBOR, including Bank of America NA, Citigroup Inc. and Barclays Capital Inc. UBS also received limited immunity for conduct relating to attempts to manipulate the Tokyo Interbank Offer Rate (TIBOR), a short-term interest rate benchmark for the euro and yen calculated using bank submissions to the Japanese Bankers Association. UBS’s limited immunity only concerns the bank’s conduct with respect to the LIBOR and TIBOR and hinges on UBS’s continued assistance to regulators in the investigation. UBS has publicly stated that the immunity may also limit its civil liability to actual damages and not punitive damages. The European Union (EU), UK and Japanese antitrust regulators are also conducting similar investigations into bank manipulation of the LIBOR.

Could it be when the dust settles on the PM markets, the big offenders will walk with immunity?

High inflation during the American civil war benefited farmers who were debtors and who received high prices for farm products. After the war, the U.S. went back to the gold standard causing general deflation. Various rural-based inflation movements developed. By the early 1890s, the Populist Party and figures within the Democratic and Republican Parties advocated “free silver” (a silver-standard currency at a high price for silver that would bring inflation). The Populists represented an alliance of rural interests and silver mining interests. Free silver advocate William Jennings Bryan became the Democratic presidential candidate of 1896, delivering the famous “Cross of Gold” speech denouncing the gold standard. This is a radio broadcast on the 100th anniversary of the speech which includes a 1923 phonograph recording of excepts from the speech by Bryan. (Bryan ran for president 4 times. He was Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson for a time. And he became the prosecutor in the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, convicting Scopes for teaching evolution in the public schools.)

Submitted by cpowell Saturday, June 18, 2011

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

The U.S. House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, chaired by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, will hold a hearing Thursday, June 23, on Paul’s proposed legislation to audit the U.S. gold reserve. Notice of the hearing can be found at the Internet site of the House Financial Services Committee here:

http://financialservices.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=247243

The text of Paul’s legislation, H.R. 1495, has been posted at the Open Congress Internet site here:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h1495/text

Pointed questions about surreptitious use of the gold reserve may be posed at the hearing to representatives of the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. Unfortunately it’s very unlikely that there will be any mainstream news media reporting about the hearing. So your secretary/treasurer plans to attend the hearing and dispatch something about it to you that evening.

But it would be a lot more useful to you and the country if the hearing was televised in its entirety by the public affairs television network C-SPAN, whose broadcast of Paul’s committee hearing on June 1 showed Fed General Counsel Scott G. Alvarez asserting, contrary to volumes of documentation collected by GATA over the years, that the disposition of the U.S. gold reserve is a matter of indifference to the Fed:

http://gata.org/node/9980

C-SPAN has not yet posted a broadcast schedule for Thursday, June 23, but the network is often receptive to requests from viewers. So please take a moment to send an e-mail to C-SPAN asking the network to broadcast the June 23 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy cited at the first Internet link above. You can reach C-SPAN’s viewer services office here:

viewer@c-span.org

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

GATA

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver):

GATA’s Gold Rush 21 conference in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, in August 2005 marked an upward turn in the gold market, showing the world that Western central banks were suppressing the price of the monetary metal through largely surreptitious and even fraudulent means — but also that they would lose.

Now GATA plans to accelerate that realization by reprising Gold Rush 21 with a conference from Thursday-Saturday, August 4-6, in London, home of the London Bullion Market Association and the gold-dumping Bank of England, which now are fairly warned. The conference will review where gold has gone on GATA’s watch and examine where it might go as it returns to its rightful place at the center of the world financial system.

The Gold Rush 2011 conference in London will be held at the famous Savoy Hotel on the Thames River —

http://www.fairmont.com/savoy/

– and will feature many of the speakers from the Gold Rush 21 conference in Dawson City, plus some who have become sensations in the gold and silver world over the last few years:

– James G. Rickards, senior managing director for market 4-8-trans-intelligence at consulting firm Omnis Inc. in McLean, Virginia.

– London silver trader and whistleblower Andrew Maguire, whose complaint about silver market manipulation, presented by GATA to the public hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington a year ago March, sent the price of silver soaring.

– Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital, who has been making the case for gold and silver on financial news television programs throughout the world.

– Market Force Analysis editor and GATA Board of Directors member Adrian Douglas, whose research studies have documented gold and silver market manipulation.

– And Cheviot Asset Management Investment Director Ned Naylor-Leyland.

Speakers returning from Gold Rush 21 will include:

– GATA Chairman Bill Murphy.

– South African gold mining industry expert Peter George.

– Sprott Asset Management Chairman Eric Sprott.

– Sprott Asset Management Chief Investment Strategist John Embry.

– GoldMoney founder James Turk.

– Hugo Salinas Price, president of the Mexican Civic Association for Silver.

– Gold price suppression litigator Reginald H. Howe.

– Kirkland Lake Gold CEO Brian A. Hinchcliffe.

– Gold market analyst John Brimelow.

– Samex Mining Corp. President Jeff Dahl.

– And your secretary/treasurer.

Admission to the conference will be $800, which also will cover an opening night reception and some meals and refreshments during the conference. Starting in about a week, the Savoy Hotel will offer conference participants a special discounted daily room rate of £225 ($360 or so at the moment). We hope to offer some family outings in London as well.

Gold Rush 21 conference organizer Janet Lee has returned to organize the London conference.

The invitation to GATA’s London conference has been posted here:

http://www.gata.org/goldrush2011-london

For more information about the conference or to register, please write to:

LondonConference@GATA.org

We’ll let you know next week when room reservations at the conference rate are being offered at the Savoy.

We hope to see many of our old friends and to make many new ones in London.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer

Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

For more details on this case you can see the DGCMagazine special issue on GATA.

Turk continues:

“I think that my gold forecast was too conservative.  Given the way central banks are printing money when they are buying government debt, I think the 1 to 1 ratio is going to be reached at a much higher price.

People don’t understand how much wealth destruction has yet to occur as this financial bust that we are in works to its inevitable conclusion.  In effect, the Dow has to lose 90% vs gold.  This wealth destruction is going to devastate a great many investors, in fact most of them will never recover from this event.

As I said earlier Eric, my thinking has changed as we have been going through this cycle.  This time around is not going to be like the gold bull market of the 1970’s.  The dollar is going to lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.  This is fundamentally different than what occurred in the 1970’s.

The US government has been running some of the largest deficits in history.  That means a lot of dollars are going to be created by the Federal Reserve to fund this newly created debt.  Recently we have been focusing on the US dollar and I want to be clear that I expect the dollar to drop to levels never seen before in history, and the scary part Eric is that it could do it very, very quickly.

When we take out the all-time low of 71.33 on the dollar index, we move into uncharted waters and there is no telling where the collapse of the dollar will end.  Some states are already taking steps to protect their citizens from the collapse of the dollar.  The Utah House just passed a bill calling for the return of the use of gold as a currency and there are at least half a dozen other states considering similar legislation.

I’m often asked by people when do I think they should sell their gold?  I tell them this time around it’s going to be easy because you are not going to sell your gold, you’re going to spend it.  In other words, gold will once again become currency.”

The dollar collapse will be like a thief in the night for most people.  As Turk mentioned previously it will shock the world, and as Sam Zell stated recently, it will cause a disastrous decline in the standard of living for Americans.  For investors who are overweight the Dow they stand to lose 90% vs gold.  I agree with Turk, most of those people will never ever recover from that wealth destruction.

Eric King

KingWorldNews.com

Source: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/3/8_James_Turk_-_Forget_$8,000,_Gold_Headed_Much_Higher.html

On Feb. 18, the last day allowed by a judge for the Federal Reserve to comply with her order, the Fed turned over to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, Inc. the minutes of the private April 1997 meeting of the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee.

This document was one of several that were sought by GATA to gain more information on the actions of the Fed that involve gold swap discussions and activities since 1990. Although the judge in the suit permitted the Federal Reserve to keep nine other documents secret, she ordered that copies of this specific document be given to GATA by Feb. 18.

For several years, the U.S. government’s official stance has been that it has not only never engaged in manipulating gold prices, but also that it has never even discussed the subject.

According to GATA, “The minutes show committee members acknowledging the heavy involvement of central banks in gold leasing, with the British delegate estimating that a year’s worth of gold production already had been sold forward.”

Another section of the minutes reported that a U.S. delegate identified as “Fisher,” probably Peter R. Fisher who was then head of open market operations and foreign exchange trading for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, “explained that U.S. gold belongs to the Treasury. However, the Treasury had issued gold certificates to the Reserve Banks, so gold (by these means) also appears on the Federal Reserve balance sheet.”

About the risk of a rise in the price of gold, Fisher said, “So the net benefit to Treasury would need to be carefully calculated, since sales of government securities would expand the public portfolio of government securities and hence also expand the Treasury’s debt-servicing burden.”

This last statement gives the most important incentive that the U.S. government has for suppressing the price of gold. If expanding government debt led to concerns about the long-term value of the U.S. dollar, then the U.S. government would have to pay a higher interest rate on its debt.

Source: http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=18113