With his sneering at GATA today, commodity letter writer Dennis Gartman (https://www.thegartmanletter.com/)
inadvertently signifies what's wrong about Western financial journalism --
its fear of committing journalism.
Gartman writes: "The 'gold bugs' shall apparently never give up. They
are as convinced now that the gold market is rigged as they were in years
past. They are confident that they are right in their belief that the central
banks are selling gold at every opportunity and that if only this
'manipulation' is brought to everyone's collective attention and exposed, then
gold shall rally and rally and rally some more.
"We shall argue simply that we do not care a whit about manipulation,
for if it is there or if it is not it is unimportant to the battles that we
have to face.
"We note then the following statement from GATA over the weekend
regarding last week's collapse in gold prices:
Note that the bombing of the gold market last week as described by
[Andrew] Maguire's interview at King World News --
http://www.gata.org/node/14643
-- did not happen in the middle of the night, as some bombings do, but
at the market open in London. This sudden mobilization of huge amounts of
paper gold in the futures market, like the sudden mobilization of huge
amounts on April 12 and 15, 2013, wasn't retail trading -- it was plainly an
intervention by a central bank or group of central banks.
"How do they know that this was 'intervention by a central bank or a
group of central banks'? Where is the proof and why should we care?
"The point here is that gold prices have weakened; that buyers were
less aggressive than were the aggressive sellers; that the longs are on the
defensive and that the shorts are dominant. What more need we know?"
In the first place, GATA does not purport to represent "gold
bugs," who come in several varieties. No, GATA consists largely of
adherents of free markets and limited and transparent government who
concentrate on the manipulation of the gold market because it is the essential
mechanism of market rigging generally and the accumulation of absolute power
in government.
How do we know that overwhelming, abrupt, and anomalous smashes in the
gold market are central bank and government interventions? Because only
central banks and governments have access to the metal and money involved and
because governments conceal their activities in the gold market more closely
than they conceal the disposition of their nuclear weapons --
http://www.gata.org/node/12016
http://www.gata.org/node/11012
-- turning away even the most basic questions about their involvement in
the gold market.
Using the imperial "we," Gartman writes: "We do not care a
whit about manipulation, for if it is there or if it is not it is unimportant
to the battles that we have to face."
But how can someone who purports to analyze markets not care about the
forces that move them?
Since central banks and governments can create infinite money and deploy
it secretly, and since U.S. government documents show that central banks now
are receiving volume discounts for secretly trading all major futures
contracts on all major futures exchanges in the United States --
http://www.gata.org/node/14385
http://www.gata.org/node/14411
-- how can someone who purports to analyze markets be indifferent to the
prospect that there really aren't any markets at all anymore?
This issue is far bigger than gold, far bigger even than money itself. It
involves the very nature of society and the relation of all peoples and
nations. And yet Gartman boldly proclaims his indifference, echoing what
Lincoln perceived as the attitude of Northern apologists for Southern
slavery: "A policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men
do care."
Financial writers who don't care excuse themselves from questioning
central banks -- that is, excuse themselves from questioning all the money
and power in the world. That's not journalism. It's toadyism.
