Articles

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."
Susan B Anthony

• Gold and Gold Equities: The near term is uncertain. The near-term path of the dollar is unclear. The world is probably decelerating towards disinflation. This could be a negative.
• The ability of the gold futures market to absorb large spec liquidation on a small price break is long term bullish. Perhaps, the official sector is conducting an orderly retreat.
• As opposed to our very positive supply/demand framework, the “official” gold supply/demand framework is not especially constructive. It now diverges so much from historical trends and abundant anecdotal information, that it has become discredited.

On Gold Bugs and Net Shorts

By Dennis Gartman
The Gartman Letter
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
www.TheGartmanLetter.com

The gold bugs are a strange lot, really. They see conspiracies everywhere and at all times. If the government is not conspiring against the public, then business is conspiring against the government, or business AND the government are conspiring against the public, and, if not that, then all three are conspiring against ghostly, foreign forces that are set to wage some sort of economic war against the country.

Buried Treasure

By Josephine Mason
Metal Bulletin
www.MetalBulletin.com
September 12, 2004

Bill Murphy is fired up. He's been fired up for a good five years now -- ever since he claims to have unearthed evidence that the price of gold was being suppressed by a gold "cartel," operated by global financial institutions, including the U.S. Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund.

The London Bullion Market Association
Bullion Market Forum
Baltschug Kempinsky Hotel, Moscow
June 3-4, 2004

Perspectives on Gold: Central Bank Viewpoint

By Oleg V. Mozhaiskov, Deputy Chairman
Bank of Russia

I would like to thank the conference organisers for this opportunity to share my thoughts on such a complex, even mythical subject as gold and the prospects for the near and medium-term. I assume that the request was made for one simple reason: that I, as a senior executive of the Bank of Russia, should know more than other ordinary mortals.

By Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
May 30, 2004

How does the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee know that central banks are working with bullion banks and other financial houses to suppress the price of gold?

We know because of the painstaking research of our consultants -- Reg Howe, James Turk, Andrew Hepburn, Mike Bolser, and Bob Landis. They have gone through the official reports and the footnotes of the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury Department, central banks and government agencies, mining companies, and financial houses, and have amassed enormous evidence.

For best legibilty click the link below for the article in Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is a very large file (20 MB):
The Return of the Gold Bugs.pdf

The links below will open .jpg images taken as scans of the article in Smart Money magazine, June 2004.

By James Turk
Copyright 2004 by The Freemarket Gold & Money Report
All rights reserved
Letter No. 341
March 15, 2004

On March 8th the European Central Bank and 14 of Europe’s national central banks made the following announcement:

http://www.ecb.int/press/04/pr040308.htm

“In the interest of clarifying their intentions with respect to their gold holdings, the undersigned institutions make the following statement:

By Andrew Hepburn

January 12, 2004

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) believes that central banks, acting through certain investment banks, have surreptitiously manipulated the price of gold. Such activity appears to have started in the mid-1990s and continues to this day. Prominent entities involved include J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Bank for International Settlements. GATA specifically alleges that the U.S. Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund has been used, contrary to official denials, for gold market interventions. Furthermore, GATA believes that the official sector intervened in the late 1990s to prevent an impending gold derivative crisis, the result of excessive short positions accumulated over many years.

Gold Derivatives: Hitting the Iceberg

What is the size of the total short physical gold position, or put another way, how much gold from their vaults have the central banks collectively deposited, leased or swapped into the market through the bullion banks? Taking advantage of guidelines promulgated by the International Monetary Fund, most central banks report their gold reserves without providing a breakdown between bullion held in their vaults and gold receivables owed to them on account of deposits, loans and swaps, as would be required under more normal accounting practice. Thus the size of the total short physical position continues to stir controversy, with Gold Fields Minerals Services sticking to its estimate of 4000 to 5000 tonnes notwithstanding the mountain of research by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee and its associates suggesting an amount two to three times as large. See, e.g., T. Wood, "That gold short position," Mineweb (December 5, 2003).