I thought you folks might like to glance at this over the weekend :-)
  3:33p ET Friday, November 23, 2001
  Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
  Two of our friends recently raised with me by e-mail an issue  that may be on the minds of others.
  The first wrote: "Has anyone ever thought that when the media  start saying that the gold market is manipulated to control spot  prices, your average investor would take this as a reason to stay  away from gold? Sometimes one can't even win for winning!"
  The second wrote: "Unfortunately, an increasingly widespread  knowledge of the manipulation will likely work to gold's detriment.  The masses are easily influenced by government activities they  perceive. They will not have the insight to expect that a  suppressed market will eventually rebound with more vigor, but  rather will tend to believe there can be no rebound while the  government is keeping the pressure on. So their natural tendency  will be to reduce purchases of gold coins and other gold items."
  Yes, if the world began to realize that the gold price was being  suppressed by the U.S. government and its agents the Wall Street financial houses, investors would react. But they might react in  a way favorable to gold.
  That is, investors might come to believe that, except by clever short-term trading on the basis of inside information, there was  no way to make money by going long on gold paper. If so, those who wanted gold itself rather than gold paper might migrate away  from the largely paper exchanges to the spot market and buy only  physical gold. Then the price for gold paper might fall even as  demand for physical gold might remain steady or even rise. And  the separation of the paper price from the physical price would  be a big blow to the manipulation, paper being much easier to  manipulate than heavy bricks of gold.
  In any case, the real purpose of the gold suppression scheme  seems to be the suppression of interest rates. And when it is  realized that the gold price is manipulated to falsify economic  indicators generally, interest rates may take their cues  elsewhere. That already may be happening.
  Maybe GATA's expectations are wrong. But our charter is to  advocate and litigate for free, unmanipulated, transparent  markets in gold and related investments, markets in which the  powerful have less advantage over the small, no matter the  results that a liberated market will have on price. We believe  that our work will result in a higher gold price, but whether  it does or not, our purpose, beyond even a higher gold price,  is a free and fair market in gold and everything related to it.
  CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. |