Rarebird, this is a continuation of our discussion about GATA.
Please review the following information I have received about GATA,
as this will have an extreme impact on the near furture price of gold.
Thanks. Doug AK
March 1, 2000
The scandal grows.
Meaningless, these technicals.
Might as well get to what this gold market is really all about.
... that and gold was bopped at the end of the day by Chase Bank
and "gold carry trade" hedge fund, Moore Capital.
And, to make matters worse there were rumors on the Comex floor
during the session that there were PRODUCER BUY BACKS.
This just cannot be.
The blatant manipulation by a faction of the U.S. government
and certain bullion dealers becomes more apparent by the day.
Demand for gold around the world is at record levels,
many of the large gold producers are delivering into their forward sales
(which is reducing gold supply hitting the physical market)
and gold sales/lending has been restricted by the European central banks.
Yet, gold remains almost exactly at the same price
it has been for the past 3 years.
IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO RISE IN PRICE NO MATTER WHAT!!!
The cries for a Congressional investigation into the gold market
will begin to grow and grow and soon there will be one.
Silver acts like it wants to go right back up again. Word is that the
silver going into the Comex warehouses will go right out again after all
of it has arrived. The new total is 95,593,836 ounces, up 1.8 million
ounces today. Just more games being played in a precious metals market.
Saturday will be an interesting silver day as it is expected that Warren
Buffet will be required to disclose (as part of a general disclosure)
whether he still owns his silver or not.
One more bullet gone for the shorts:
AMSTERDAM, Feb 29 (Reuters) - The Dutch central bank said on Tuesday
it sold 5.5 tonnes of gold last week and will stop its sales programme
until at least September since it has achieved its 100-tonne target.
From a money manager who sent me this yesterday:
"There is no real reason for the dollar to be strong.
The trade deficit is at record levels,
we have the potential Huge Bubble,
and possible SETTLEMENT Problems in the banking system if things
get real crazy, which is a possibility, due to the Derivatives."
Another ancecdotal for you:
"I work in an industry that supplies the heavy trucking industry.
We have always said "you can see the state of the economy by sales
of trucks and accessories." We always lead the economy up or down
by a couple of months. I'm getting worried by what I'm hearing
about the slowdown in sales."
And then we have:
"The Aussie dollar has been hammered by some "investment funds"
(according to local analysts) in recent days. The last time this
happened the Reserved Bank of Aust. sold gold to defend the Aust$.
Also, at ~Aust$500/oz Aussie miners find it very attractive to hedge,
hence the recent increased forward selling activities by them.
Just coincidental ? you bet."
The Aussie dollar gets curioser and curioser. Today, it closed sharply
lower at 60.44. The Canadian dollar, on the other hand closed at 69.07,
up slightly and it is not too far from recent highs. Australia is a
commodity country, just like Canada is, and commodity prices are going up.
What is different about the two currencies is that Australia has gold
producers that have a tendency to hedge their gold production when given
an opening. A weak Aussie dollar means that gold is higher priced in their
local currency versus a dollar gold price. That gives them a greater
incentive to do some hedging. Wonder who is selling off the Aussie dollar
and why?
GATA is not the only one on the Bank of England's case:
Gold auctions to blame for $30m fall,
says Rio By Roland Gribben - London Telegraph
RIO Tinto yesterday added to the Government's discomfort over last year's
gold sales by criticising the auction process and estimating that the slide
in the precious metal price cost the company $30m. Sir Robert Wilson,
chairman, said: "We thought the sale was handled in a pretty clumsy way
and that wasn't necessary. Just to announce the sale obviously had a
depressing effect on the market."
He thought Gordon Brown, Chancellor, and the Bank of England should have
followed conventional central bank policy of selling the gold before making
any announcement to avoid the risk of a price fall. The gold price wobbled
as the Bank mounted three auctions as part of the Government programme
to reduce gold reserves from 715 tonnes to 415 tonnes over the next years.
End.
Potpourri and the Gold Shares
The XAU finished the day modestly higher at 60.93 up 1.17,
ignoring the late day gold sell off.
An anecdotal sign of the bottom in the gold market?:
Financial Times - Monday February 28, 2000
Australia's miners bet on the internet as the next gold rush
"In the past year, more than a third of Australia's 300-odd listed
junior gold producers and explorers have totally or partly transformed
themselves into internet, telecoms or other new technology stocks." End.
Another Hannibal Cannibal bites the dust:
Barclays Bank bullion dealer news: In addition to Tony Hill in their
London office, Martino Bolli got laid off last week in their NY office.
Bullion dealer woes accelerate:
Word just in that J.P. Morgan is thought to be closing down its bullion
operations in NY to concentrate all its bullion trading dealings in London.
That makes sense as the gold market manipulation scandal will be focused
on the NY operations of the bullion dealers. When Congress gets into the act,
the investigating committee members will want to chat with some of the high
and mighty NY bullion dealers. J.P. Morgan is co-chair of the Counterparty
Risk Management Group with Goldman Sachs. Could J.P Morgan's motto concerning
gold market risk be, "when in doubt, get out."
This is no small potatoes. J.P. Morgan is the central bank's bank
and has been the top dog bullion bank for 100 years. If they close
down their bullion trading operations in New York, it would make them
a second tier bullion bank - a major event in the bullion banking world.
There is also talk that the derivative book of bullion dealer,
Credit Suisse, is in bad shape, especially their Australian derivatives.
For months now I have suggested that the gold market could explode
to the upside when the bullion dealers sound the bugle for retreat.
Not just because not even a fraction of the gold loans can be covered,
but because of derivative problems in many other financial markets.
The pace of the day of reckoning grows by the week as the downsizing
of bullion dealer operations escalates.
This has be very very good news for our camp. The less bullion dealer
operations there are, the less peddlers there will be of gold forward
sell programs to the gold producers and the less bearish propaganda
will be fed to the press.
Another comforting Barrick Gold story:
Friday, February 25, 2000
Lawyers look to bring Barrick into amended Bre-X suit
Texas class action:
Barrick has yet to file a response to latest allegations
Sandra Rubin
Financial Post
Lawyers representing shareholders caught in the Bre-X Minerals Ltd.
gold swindle are asking a Texas judge to consider new evidence that
Barrick Gold Corp. was alerted to the possibility of fraud months
before the scandal rocked North American markets.
Toronto-based Barrick not only failed to disclose the disturbing findings
by one of its own experts, but company officials made "misleading" public
statements about Bre-X that did not reflect doubts about the find's voracity,
according to the filing in Texarkana, Tx.
The class-action lawyers are asking a U.S. federal court judge for permission
to amend their complaint to add the new allegations. The filing comes as both
sides await a key ruling on whether Barrick, which was among those dismissed
from the Bre-X suit last year, will be reinstated as a defendant.
The fresh evidence is based on the findings of Jan Merks, a sampling expert
employed by Barrick on Dec. 16, 1996, to analyze troubling Bre-X test results.
Barrick had sent 135 samples from what was supposedly the richest gold find
in the world and 133 had come back showing no gold.
Mr. Merks was given the results on Dec. 17 -- and within hours had warned
Barrick in a memo that "extreme caution is in order," as reported in the
Financial Post in January. He also mentioned a previous gold fraud and
suggested they test for the same telltale signs.
"Barrick knew this crucial information for almost five months while
tens of thousands of shares of Bre-X ... continued to trade on the Nasdaq
and elsewhere," according to the filing. "Despite this knowledge, Barrick
made unqualified public statements about gold and future mines at Busang,
statements which were false, or at best misleading to investors.
"Not once did Barrick even hint at the troubling evidence of fraud
that it and its consultants had discovered," the filing said. End.
Many of you have asked how Martin Armstrong is doing.
Don't really know.
He tried to call GATA's Chris Powell and I a couple of times,
but we were out.
Here is a recent story about him.
It is clear that Martin Armstrong is still really being harassed:
Lawyers quit Armstrong case
02/26/00
By TONY HAGEN
Staff Writer
NEW YORK -- Martin A. Armstrong, a one-time commodities guru accused
of running a $1 billion bond swindle from West Windsor, N.J., offices,
yesterday said he will represent himself against civil charges.
The bond dealer, who headed Princeton Economics International
and Princeton Global Management at Carnegie Center, has been dropped
by the criminal defense lawyers he retained at the time of his arrest
in September, and his civil defense lawyer is attempting to be released
from the case.
Armstrong doesn't have money to pay them and a federal judge has ordered the
lawyers to surrender $1.3 million in retainers they were paid in September.
A Maple Shade, N.J., resident, Armstrong has pleaded innocent to charges
he concealed up to $450 million in trading losses by causing false account
statements to be issued to companies who bought his "Princeton Note" bonds.
He has said the losses were exaggerated and he is being made a scapegoat
for offenses committed by others.
Armstrong yesterday asked U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence McKenna
to help him get permission to have a laptop computer in his jail cell
so he could do case research.
He was jailed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City
last month after U.S. District Court Richard Owen found him in contempt
of an order to turn over $16 million in allegedly missing company valuables
and documents. Armstrong said he turned over everything in his possession.
YESTERDAY, HE also asked McKenna to help get the court-appointed receiver
in the case, Alan M.Cohen, to produce a list of items the trader allegedly
still has. Armstrong said his goal is to prove that he doesn't have the items
and get himself released from jail.
On the criminal charges of securities fraud, Armstrong faces a maximum
jail term of 10 years and fines.
Yesterday, Martin Siegel, a lawyer appointed to represent Armstrong against
the criminal charges, said he expected the case would not come to trial until
the fall or early winter of 2000 "at the earliest," due to a "massive" amount
of research needed.
Armstrong and representatives of the U.S. Attorney's Office, which lodged
the criminal charges, were ordered to return to McKenna's chambers on
April 14 to give an update on their progress in preparing for trial.
Yesterday, an attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office objected to Armstrong's
request for a computer, saying he could do research simply by reading paper
documents. But McKenna said he saw no security risk.
"You're talking about a laptop computer, not something hooked up
to the phone lines," McKenna said. End.
The palladium/TOCOM disaster continues. The NYMEX raised customer margins
to $50,625 as of tonite's close. Japan Inc. has really boneheaded this one
by freezing palladium contracts until March 15. No one put a gun to the head
of the shorts to stay short. They had months of time to get out of this well
advertised explosive PM situation. The effects of this shortsighted action
will be felt for some time to come and could become a precedent for other
exchanges to do the same thing down the road.
Free markets have been seriously threatened. Is that what Comex is going
to do when the gold price takes off in a moonshot. AND IT WILL!!!!!!
The oil/gold ratio is all the way down to 9.3. When markets were not rigged
or fundamentals mattered, this ratio would have represented a screaming gold
buy signal. I once did some gold business with an Afghanistan cashmere
merchant. This legendary trader from Afghanistan told me that if the
gold/oil ratio ever goes under 11, gold is the buy of a lifetime.
I would agree with him, even today.
All the best,
Bill Murphy,
Chairman Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.(GATA)
gata.org
[End. Bill Murphy talks about GATA activity.] |
