September 4, 1999 By BILL "MIDAS" MURPHY www.lemetropolecafe.com It is fascinating to me that much of what we have covered at the Cafe over the past year is starting to synchronize and boil over. So I thought I would put some labor into this Labor Day weekend and examine what is happening on the scandal front, as well as update you on the peculiar nature of it all. Much of the hubbub about the manipulation of the gold market began early last fall. Then Long-Term Capital Management was supposedly taken off the hook on a 300- tonne "borrowed gold" short position by the financial entities that bailed them out. Since I had heard as early as May 1997 that LTCM might have this amount of gold exposure, it was no surprise to me to hear so many rumors floating around of this nature, and I did not hesitate to publicly question the propriety of it all. Our protests caught the attention of Long-Term Capital Management and its attorney, James G. Rickards, who sent us a letter, along with an affidavit from fund principal Eric Rosenfeld. Rickards stated that Long- Term Capital Management denied any involvement in the manipulation of the gold market, and Rosenfeld said to the Cafe, "None of LTCM, LTCP, nor their affiliates, has ever entered into any transaction involving the purchase or sale of gold, including without limitation, spot, forwards, options, futures, loans, borrowings, repurchases, coin or bullion, long or short, physical or derivative, or in any other form whatsoever." I responded to Rickards in a letter saying that the Cafe never accused LTCM of manipulating the gold market, nor did I ever say that that LTCM "traded" gold. I strongly suggested that LTCM had "borrowed" 300 tonnes of gold and had gold exposure in a credit sense with the bullion banks, and I asked him for a response. Rickards never did respond to me, and the other day it was announced that he has resigned from LTCM to join another firm. Then there is information we received from a very sophisticated source that a blind trust for Hillary Clinton "shorted" gold instruments just prior to the Bank of England's announcement of its plan to sell gold. Interestingly, it was reported yesterday that the down payment for the Clintons' new home in Westchester County, N.Y., came from her blind trust. It was strongly suggested to me from a source that we try to find out if Hillary Clinton has a blind trust at Goldman Sachs. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee and the Cafe now have allies looking into this matter. We are trying to find out who is handling her blind trust or any other accounts she might have and, once these are identified, attempt to elicit a response about the gold-shorting speculation. Why would this be the H-bomb as far as we are concerned? Simply put, I have set forth much commentary linking the Clinton administration, the New York Fed, Goldman Sachs, Long-Term Capital Management, the British treasury, the Bank of England, and Prime Minister Tony Blair. A revelation of this nature would solidify the link. For example: * Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is a former Goldman Sachs CEO. * Former N.Y. Fed Governor Ed Corrigan is a senior partner at Goldman Sachs. * London-based senior partner Gavyn Davies is Goldman Sach's international economist and has close ties to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Davies' wife, Susan Nye, is officer manager for the chancellor of the exchequer. * Dr. Sushil Wadhwani, former director of equity strategy at Goldman Sachs International (1991-95), sits on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. The committee's duties include determining the bank's objectives and strategy. * Jon Corzine, former Goldman Sachs CEO, has close ties to John Meriwether, chairman of Long-Term Capital Management. * Former Fed Vice Chairman David Mullins was a partner
in Long-Term Capital Management, which, of course, was bailed out in part by Goldman Sachs. Exhibit 2 and further background information on the significance of the Hillary Clinton gold shorting story comes from this commentary about the Bank of England's gold sale from the document I sent to Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee: "Yet, the night before the BOE announcement (May 6, 1999), I feared duplicity and this is what I wrote in my Midas du Metropole commentary entitled, `XAU surges 46 percent': "We know `the squad' are all lining up, one more time, to try to stifle a decent gold move to the upside. Deutsche Bank, Chase, Swiss Bank, and Goldman Sachs were all there selling gold during today's session and, when they had to, even throwing the kitchen sink at the bulls' attack. Deutsche Bank has been especially aggressive and noticeable in its selling the past few days. We got word late this afternoon that its bullion desk is calling clients saying that the gold market is stopping at $290. I don't think Midas followers will be surprised when we tell you that big sellers late in the day today and taking on all bids were `squad' honchos Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. The Battle for Navarone is an important stand for them, for if $290 is taken out to the upside, their longstanding bearish position could begin to look a bit shaky." The next morning I awoke to the Bank of England announcement. Since then the price of gold has collapsed more than $36 -- or almost 15 percent -- and the sale has ignited a furor all over the world, fostering talk of conspiracies, etc. Before I get into the ramifications of the sale, I thought the following utterances by some of England's most notable officials might raise an eyebrow or two: Wire service commentary July 14, 1999 (my comments in parentheses): "Asked in Parliament if it was right to sell off part of Britain's reserves, Prime Minister Tony Blair replied, `The gold price has been falling for two years, so in fact if it carried on falling and we didn't sell we would lose money.'" Blair then declined to say if he would meet with the South African gold industry delegation, but said the gold sale was justified, stating, "We did this on technical advice from the Bank of England." (Haruko Fakuda, CEO of the World Gold Council, was told that the decision was a political one and made by the British Treasury, not the bank.) Blair went on to say, "It is only the Conservative Party's utter obsession with the euro in some bizarre way. Given that Argentina and Switzerland are also selling gold, what it has to do with the euro I do not know. It is only that which is making them raise this issue. It was done, as I say, on technical advice. It was carried through perfectly sensibly and we actually got the best deal for the country." How wrong can you get? The best deal the Bank of England could have made would have been $30 to $40 more per ounce by carrying out the sale as all the other major countries have done for 20 years. But the story now gets confounding. On Sunday, July 11, the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, said in the London Times, "The proposal to sell the reserves was put to ministers by officials and, say treasury insiders, agreed to it with little discussion." According to the London Times article, the chancellor is said to have been surprised and mortified by the reaction from Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, who said the Bank of England's gold sales would have a "potentially disastrous effect" on South Africa. OK, so what gives here? Blair said it was a Bank of England decision. The Bank of England says it was a Treasury decision. The Treasury says it was only a Treasury decision of sorts and agreed to with little discussion. Good grief. A decision that may have disastrous effects on South Africa, a democracy the West is committed to, was made with little discussion and no one will take responsibility for it. Yet it is such an important decision that Tony Blair will not reconsider it, even though it appears he does not know who made the decision in the first place. Meanwhile, the mortified (but confused) chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, just prior to the trip to England by the African delegation, was all over the wire services talking about the righteousness of his decision on gold, while continuing to extol the virtues of the proposed gold sales by the International Monetary Fund. The headline on the Reuters dispatch read: "U.K.'s Brown Sees Wide Support for IMF Gold Sales." But a Bloomberg audio report reveals that when the Bank of England's Eddie George was asked whether the bank's gold sale was 1) his decision, 2) whether he was involved in it, or 3) whether he was consulted, his response was that he was consulted, which is a euphemism for being told. When asked who made the asset allocation decisions on the "bank reserves," George answered, "the government" -- that is, the politicians. So what do we have here? The British now say their decision to sell gold was planned for some time and made the announcement, coincidentally, as the price of gold was about to take off. They became the first central bank in more than 20 years to make an announcement of a gold sale in advance. They knew this announcement would devastate the market from a psychological perspective and send gold prices crashing -- and, of course, it did. The price went straight down more than $36 per ounce. This assured Britain the worst price possible and cost the country hundreds of millions of pounds. Now no one in the British government will own up to making this mysterious decision, which is devastating poor African countries, among others. Meanwhile, as my May 6 commentary indicated, somehow the bullion dealers knew what was coming and told their clients as much. It does not take an Einstein to comprehend the significance of determining if there is a financial account of any kind someplace that shorted gold for Hillary Clinton just prior to the Bank of England's gold sale announcement. With the help of others, I am trying to track down where her accounts are located, and then we will start asking questions. It will be interesting first to find out if Hillary Clinton has an account at Goldman Sachs. Now for the "scandale du jour." It revolves around GATA protagonist Martin Armstrong and his firm, Princeton Economics International. The latest from two wire services: "New York, Sept 2 (Bloomberg) -- Republic New York Corp. said it suspended the head of its securities unit after an investigation of a client's affiliate in Japan. HSBC Holdings PLC said the probe may delay its acquisition of Republic. "The bank is under investigation by U.S. law enforcement and regulatory authorities for inflating the net asset value of an investment fund, the Wall Street Journal reported. Republic said it is working with U.S. and Japanese regulators on the probe..... "Republic isn't the subject of its investigation, the FSA said. The Japanese authorities are looking at Crestvale International Ltd., an institutional brokerage based in Hong Kong, with offices in London, Tokyo, and New York, a person familiar with the matter said. Princeton Economics International, a money manager based in Princeton, N.J., owns Crestvale." "New York, Sept 3 (Reuters) -- "Analysts and a Republic shareholder told Reuters they thought the Republic unit and the Princeton affiliates may have participated in so-called 'tobashi' deals, in which Japanese institutions hide losses through complex derivative transactions. The probe is limited to Republic's dealings with the Princeton affiliates and does not extend to other client relationships, these sources said. "Analyst Gerard Cassidy of Tucker Anthony said, 'It appears one of two things happened: Princeton told Republic this is what (the investments) are worth and Republic took it at face value, or Princeton, in conjunction with Republic Securities, determined the value, which was artificially inflated." The Reuters story goes on to say, "The firm (Republic) also hired Lee Hennessee, an adviser who helped clients pick hedge funds, or unregulated investment funds for wealthy investors that trade a variety of securities, usually using borrowed money." This begins to raise all sorts of issues on what we have reported to you and one that we have not yet. We understand that certain other bullion dealers have been lending gold to Republic. That is very strange. Republic is a bullion dealer. Why is it borrowing gold from other bullion dealers? We have already reported to you that one bullion dealer told us that he has turned down at least one hedge fund that wanted to borrow gold from his bank. (We are trying to find out if was Armstrong.) All this is going on with the one-month gold lease rate (borrowing rate) now skyrocketing to 4.2 percent, up from a normal 1 percent. It is well known that Republic has done much of Armstrong's silver and gold business on the Comex. Sources told me Friday that Armstrong has not been seen on the Comex lately and they had heard that his funds were not doing very well. In addition we have reported that sources tell us that four hedge funds (Soros, Tiger, Moore Capital, and Martin Armstrong) are short from 30 million to 50 million ounces of gold. The number filtered back to us on Armstrong is that he is short anywhere from 8 to 20 million ounces. But how can this be? Armstrong has had correspondence with the secretary of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, Chris Powell, denying he was short gold. I am presenting excerpts from Armstrong's commentary. The first two are to GATA in May 1999 and the next one was sent to Armstrong's subscribers in June. The investigation into his firm, Crestvale, began in May. Note how his tone changes towards GATA from May to June. The last piece is long, but well worth the read. * * * May 14, 1999 Dear Chris: I understand your frustration that gold has been perhaps the worst investment for the past 20 years. But to argue that it is being manipulated due to large short positions is not justified. There is no interest in gold at this time and the central banks are all sellers. After they sell their gold, then we will see a bull market. Once those supplies are gone, no one will be able to lean on that supply and your bull market will begin. I hate to tell you, but gold will drop to under $200 before it turns. I find it extremely one-sided how a Buffet and company of tagalongs is not a manipulation because they buy, while selling is a manipulation. The very guys you argue are manipulating gold down were big sellers of gold and buyers of silver during the Buffet rally. GS or not, the economy simply does not support your position. And I do not want to hear how I am short or some nonsense to try to discredit my views, because it is not true. PEI owns a 51 percent stake in a public gold mine in Australia. That is my long-term view; it does not change my short-term view. You cannot make a case for gold manipulation when central banks are willing sellers. They have demonetized gold and that is a simple fact of life. If you want a free market, then don't stand in the way of this bear market. Let the central bankers sell everything they have and then there will be no overhead supply to worry about. You cannot argue manipulation and take the position that these guys are not allowed to sell what they have. The banks know what is coming and if they sell ahead of the central banks, so be it -- that's a free market. MARTIN ARMSTRONG Princeton Economics * * * Saturday, May 15, 1999 Dear Chris: Your view of Long-Term Capital Management is slightly distorted. The bailout was in fact for the financial markets. The shareholders of LTCM were wiped out. The banks were given the assets in return for an orderly liquidation. The investors in LTCM did not receive a bailout. The IMF has its own agenda. The Republicans have demanded access to the International Monetary Fund's decision process and the IMF refuses. It has emerged as its own authority. When the gold standard collapsed, the IMF simply reinvented itself. I speak to many people on Capitol Hill and they are not in bed with the IMF. The debate behind closed doors has been how to make the IMF at least accountable to someone. Its policies imposed upon Third World nations are a throwback to a fixed exchange rates system. They are the ones who insisted upon fixed exchanges rates and that they must hold at all costs -- a great policy, as demonstrated by Korea and others. I work in this field quite extensively. There is no conspiracy. The problem is that the IMF and the Bank of International Settlements along with the World Bank all have their own agendas and they have been at odds with the G7 nations on many issues. No government is in charge of these guys and only now are some beginning to understand that profound fact. When the gold standard collapsed, nobody was there to turn out the lights. If this were a true conspiracy, then perhaps it would be better organized. As it is, these institutions are like the Keystone Cops. They know not what they do! Gold will one day return to a bull market. Perhaps in 2000 or at the latest in 2002. The lack of a paper currency (Euro) is still driving international capital toward the dollar. This trend could last for a few more years. The European politicians are trying to create a currency that is not based upon economics at all. Hence the swan dive since Jan. 1. I'd rather hold a dollar than a euro right now. By the way, William Jennings Bryan stood for inflation -- not sound money. The great financial panics of the last decade of the 19th century were largely caused by the silver Democrats who took 72 cents worth of silver and called it a dollar. People then began to hoard gold, according to Gresham's Law. The U.S. Treasury needed to be bailed out by J.P. Morgan, who lent it $100 million in gold in order to make payments. Otherwise, the United States would have been declared bankrupt internationally -- and there was no IMF back then. Money is a difficult thing to define. It is, in its purest form, whatever the majority believes it to be. The Babylonians began with gold because it was abundant in their region. The Greeks began with silver for the same reason. The Romans had only bronze, as was the case in Japan and China. The Japanese did not issue gold coins until the 19th century in order to facilitate trade with the West, just as Russian today are adopting dollars on the street. The Egyptians used both precious metals, by weight, and wheat; they never minted coins. Only after the birth of Imperial Rome, starting with Augustus, do we find gold as a regular part of the monetary system in the west -- some 2,000 years ago. After the fall of Rome, gold disappeared and the monetary system became the silver penny of Europe. Gold began to reappear as money after 600 years during the reign of Henry III. Those who like to claim that gold has been money for 6,000 years leave out that it too has not always survived as money in the past. Perhaps one day gold will re-emerge as the black market form of money if government succeeds in moving to a pure electronic form of cash. But given the history of gold, it could be in our children's lifetime. All the best. I leave for Euroland for two weeks tonight. MARTIN ARMSTRONG Princeton Economics * * * Gold: Manipulation or Exaggeration? By Martin A. Armstrong Copyright 1999 / Princeton Economics International June 10, 1999 A two-man army calling itself GATA has begun to besiege the media attempting to gain a lot of press on the platform that gold is being "manipulated" by a cartel of investment banks. They constantly point to what they call the huge "carry trade" in gold were there is far more gold sold than exists. The tenets of the commodity markets, be it cash or futures, is that every position is offset by an equal and opposite position. There cannot be more outstanding short positions than long positions, yet the total number of positions combined can far exceed the actual supply. However, the same thing can happen in S&P 500 futures or even U.S. 30-year bond futures. That is the nature of the free markets. Those who own a commodity have the right to sell it, lend it or hedge it to someone else who is willing to take the other side, for whatever reason, be it hedging a future use or betting on the next bull market. Above all, this single misconception has been man's greatest downfall. For during almost every great financial panic in history, government has launched intrusive investigations seeking to uncover that horrible short position that has manipulated the entire marketplace through its sheer ability to overpower it with size. Every investigation to date has begun with that misguided belief that a short position can be larger than a long position, failing to understand in the process that all positions must balance. In the wake of the Panic of 1907, short selling was declared a criminal act despite the fact that they never found that horrible person who overpowered the marketplace. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that law against short selling and the free market went on. The true cause of the decline was only finally revealed as a cash-flow problem, which in turn gave birth to the Federal Reserve six years later. An investigation was launched following the Crash of 1929, from which the Securities and Exchange Commission was born. People from all over the country were questioned by Congress and accused, without evidence, of somehow being short behind the scenes. The mere accusation made against people ruined their reputations and provided the basis that launched a thousand lawsuits. When the evidence was finally collected, all the famous names were found to have been long ? not short. From Rockefeller on down, they all lost staggering amounts of money. The multimillion-dollar short position never surfaced once again. The same was true following the Crash of 1987. Those who should have been short as a hedge against their stock portfolios were, in fact, found to have been significantly under hedged. No massive short position ever surfaced from the 1987 investigation and they imposed circuit breakers that needed to be revised in 1997. The "carry trade" in gold that has been the subject of much discussion is seriously misunderstood. There are those who would like to point to this position as the cause for the decline in gold. They are dead wrong. The "carry trade" in the OTC gold market has been around for years. The Arabs have used gold as a means to earn interest without calling it interest. Islam forbids the lending of money for interest known as the sin of usury. The Arabs have used the carry trade in gold since the early 1980s. They buy spot and sell forward and collect the "carry" or premium on a back month. This premium is a reflection of the cost to "carry" a gold position. If you buy the current spot and sell the forward, you earn that net difference without being exposed to the price fluctuation of gold itself. In reality, the investment banks can book billions of dollars of such transactions that have NO impact or relevance to the gold market. Technically, the Arabs are not receiving interest but instead they are buying gold today and selling it for a few dollars more 3 months out. These profits are allowed under Islam, whereas normal interest earnings are forbidden. The Japanese are also involved in the "carry trade" in gold. Public futures funds in Japan are still regulated under the commodity acts even if they trade Nikkei or S&P500 futures. Since the definition of ALL futures funds remains that of a "commodity" fund according to Japanese regulation, there is a strict investment guideline. ALL futures funds must be invested 50 percent at all times in commodities. Hence, the Japanese futures funds are also using the gold "carry trade" in order to meet the crazy requirement that the fund must be invested 50 percent in commodities at all times. Again, gold is purchased on the spot and sold forward without risk. Again, this becomes a paper transaction where a bank will certify that there is a trade on their books thus allowing the fund to meet its requirements for being invested 50 percent in commodities at all times. The balance of the fund then CANNOT be invested in commodities and off they go into the financial futures world trading Nikkei, JGBs, S&P 500 and the like. Of course, the last type of this "carry trade" involves the mining companies. Here, gold is sold forward in order for a company to plan its operating expenses. A budget can be established only if there is some assured return for their production. Others may borrow gold on an interest rate differential. In this case, a gold loan comes with a lower interest rate. The gold is sold on the spot and the loan is repaid from future production. It is a cheap means of acquiring financing. Interest on gold loans tends to be lower because it is a dead asset on the books of its owners since there is no income and often there are storage and insurance costs. Consumers of such loans are typically mining companies or manufacturers. The granters of gold loans are holders, including central banks. Holding gold without lending can be very costly, but by lending the gold, a holder retains ownership since the borrower is committed to repay the loan in gold plus interest thereby reducing the holding costs. Gold is no more being manipulated today in some grand conspiracy than it was going into the 1980 high. We disagree that the Hunts were market manipulators in silver back in 1980. Perhaps one could have argued that the Hunts manipulated silver IF it was the only commodity to have risen during the entire period. However, the CPI was hitting 17 percent annually and people were hoarding toilet paper. All commodities were in a strong bull market -- not ONLY silver. Likewise, we find it extremely difficult to also accept that just because of the "carry trade" in gold that it is being manipulated lower when all other commodities are also in a bear market. To further argue that if these massive short positions were forced out of the marketplace gold prices would rise makes no sense. If you chase the Japanese and the Arabs out of gold, nothing will change. These types of transactions do NOT impact prices, but they do have an impact by making gold appear to be extremely liquid. If you outlaw gold loans you destroy the free market and most likely cause massive liquidations on the part of those who have such hoards but need some kind of income. Those who jump up on the soapboxes and cry foul about sales of gold by the International Monetary Fund, Bank of England and the rest of the central banks seem to miss the point. The governments of the world DO NOT share their belief that only gold is money and that a return to the gold standard is inevitable. Such a step back in time would require the complete abandonment of virtually every social program introduced since World War II -- a highly UNLIKELY political decision. The governments of the world have a self interest in not returning to the gold standard. In 1985, we argued that governments must return to some fixed exchange rate mechanism or that volatility would escalate into 2003 disrupting the world economy as a whole. The White House responded by stating that any return to the fixed exchange rate system would mean that "domestic policy objectives would be held hostage to international policy objectives." This was a fancy way of stating that such a system meant a return to a balanced budget and, in turn, that meant that politicians could NOT offer wonderful social programs if they had to actually fund them long-term. We do NOT disagree that the floating exchange rate system has allowed national debts to explode and that at some point in the future there must be reconciliation with reality. However, such a collapse in society is not likely to come before the 2012 time period when the obligations of governments will be unbearable. In effect, the formation of the European Monetary Union this year is a step toward preparing for these serious default problems in the future. In France, there are plenty of guarantees by the government for your pension but there is no money set aside to support those guarantees. The French population has no 401K or private system that they can count on. This situation could spark the next French revolution when the population faces the fact that their pensions have only been political promises. The same is true in many regions of Europe. By banding together, Europe hopes to capture the capital that moves between the cracks and thus increase their revenues in an effort to reduce all future liabilities. A Federal Europe will be far better equipped to deal with the problems together rather than on a divided basis. By allowing the euro to collapse, they are in effect devaluing their future obligations, which is one way of getting out of the mess. You meet your obligations but you pay with a currency that is worth far less than it was at the point the promise was made. Then they manipulate CPI in an effort to reduce any increase in liabilities by purporting that there is no inflation. There is a serious question that needs to be asked based upon the events economically since World War II. The gold standard gave way because governments continued to increase their debts but never readjusted the price of gold in proportion to the increase in money supply. Instead of admitting that their borrowings had created inflation, they chose to close the gold window and end the gold standard. The rally in gold during the 1970s was a natural response for any and all commodities that had been artificially restrained. Thus, if one wants to discuss manipulations, the gold standard was the biggest manipulation of all by keeping the value of gold fixed while the supply of money increased. Gold was NOT money; it was merely a store of wealth in which money was expressed. This is why the gold standard collapsed. The global economy is indeed showing signs of distress. The IMF loan portfolio looks like a charity case with assets that will never be repaid. Any normal bank would be declared insolvent and closed with a portfolio of this nature. The IMF has long past its expiration date. The original intent behind the IMF was to be a lender to nations who temporarily were unable to meet their obligations under the gold standard. Hence, the IMF became the largest holder of gold in order for it to provide gold loans. Since there is a political agenda that is intent upon never returning to a gold standard due to its impact upon the social goals of the left wing, it makes perfect sense that central banks and the IMF should in fact liquidate their gold assets. While this may be a major bearish factor short-term, it is also most likely going to provide a true free market in gold long-term. Gold will also be capped as long as the bulk of its supply remains in the vaults of the central banks. The idea that they are trying to manipulate gold lower is not well-founded. Australia sold its reserves when they caught wind of the true agenda of liquidation. From the Australian perspective, they sold about $100 higher than the current price, saving considerable national reserves. For these reas |