Let's welcome fund manager and market analyst Mike "Mish" Shedlock
to the growing ranks of those who once dismissed complaints of gold market
manipulation but who now find sanctuary behind admissions that
"everything is manipulated."
In his latest commentary, headlined "Reader Question: Is Gold
Manipulated?" --
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/20...estion-is-go...
-- Shedlock dutifully disparages GATA before acknowledging some curiosity
about gold's recent "middle-of-the-night plunges at illiquid
times."
"It would not surprise me one bit," Shedlock writes, "if the
market makers manipulated gold to its previous high with the GATA advocates
screaming all the way that the MMs were holding the price down.
"It's tiring to hear the exact same manipulation charges no matter
what gold is doing. And such screaming has gone on for years, even though gold
has quadrupled since 2000 (certainly far more than the major stock market
indices).
"That said, someone sure benefits from these the middle-of-the-night
plunges at illiquid times. So put me in the group wondering who that is, and
what if any laws were violated in doing so. And if laws were violated, let's
have an accounting, as well as a look at the laws."
Of course Shedlock is misleading here, since GATA has not been complaining
about ordinary market makers in gold but rather about largely surreptitious
intervention in the gold market by central banks.
Shedlock is additionally misleading by failing to acknowledge that this
intervention and a policy of price suppression particularly could be
implemented with a gradually rising gold price to maintain what central banks
like to call "orderly" currency markets, which are something other
than free markets.
But as Shedlock writes, yes, "let's have an accounting." Could
we start with central banks, and could Shedlock assist in that accounting by
pursuing these questions?:
-- Are central banks in the gold market surreptitiously or not?
-- If central banks are in the gold market surreptitiously, is it
just for fun -- for example, to see which central bank's trading desk can
make the most money by cheating the most investors -- or is it for policy
purposes?
-- If central banks are in the gold market for policy purposes, are
these the traditional purposes of defeating a potentially competitive world
reserve currency, or have these purposes expanded?
-- If central banks, creators of infinite money, are
surreptitiously trading a market, how can it be considered a market at all,
and how can any country or the world ever enjoy a market economy again?
Extensive documentation that central banks are surreptitiously trading the
gold market not merely to make a little money on the sly but to control the
monetary metal's price and interest rates and to protect their currencies and
government bonds has been summarized and linked here:
http://www.gata.org/node/14839
None of this is mere "conspiracy theory," as Shedlock disparages
complaints of gold market manipulation, though certainly conspiracy is
involved when central bankers meet secretly to devise and implement a course
of action about the markets, as they frequently do. This is conspiracy fact,
and to test it Shedlock needs only to try to attend the meetings of the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the board of the European Central
Bank, the board of the International Monetary Fund, and the board of the Bank
for International Settlements, among others.
Rather this is all about longstanding government policy. Shedlock
should try questioning central bankers about it. If he is really curious now
and not just posturing his way out of an awkward position, their evasion
might make him even more curious.
