I wondered if you’d seen the article linked below, "The Manipulation of Gold Prices" by James Conrad that was featured on the seekingalpha.com website on 12/4/08.
It’s one of the best pieces I’ve ever seen written by someone outside of JSMineset and brings together the subjects of Comex gold price manipulation, the Fed’s efforts to control the value of the U.S. dollar, quantitative easing and the Fed’s eventual need (and design) to devalue the dollar vs. gold.
The article is too complex and wide-ranging to be quickly summarized, but some of the more interesting passages are as follows:
"The Federal Reserve must now make a tough choice. In the past, Federal Reserve Chairmen may have felt it necessary to support regular attacks on gold prices to dissuade conservative people from putting a majority of their capital into gold. Now, however, the world economy needs much higher gold prices in order to devalue paper money, not against other currencies in a "beggar thy neighbor" policy, but against itself. This can jump start the system. If the Fed continued to support gold price suppression, that would collapse the stock market far deeper than they can afford, most insurers will end up bankrupt, and there will be no hope of avoiding Great Depression II."
"Anyone who reads the written works of our Fed Chairman knows that Bernanke’s long term plan involves devaluing the dollar against gold. This is the exact opposite of most prior Fed Chairmen. He has overtly stated his intentions toward gold, many times, in various articles, speeches and treatises written before he became Fed Chairman. He often extols the virtues of former President Franklin Roosevelt’s gold revaluation/dollar devaluation, back in 1934, and credits it with saving the nation from the Great Depression."
Interestingly, the author suggests that some of the recent taking physical delivery of gold at the Comex may be attributable to "smart players at big firms" buying gold at the Comex to re-sell into the spot market for a profit in a process he calls, "backwardization." In support of this theory he makes an assertion I have only seen you make before, that:
"In spite of the ostensible existence of a so-called "London fix," 96% of all OTC transactions are secret and unreported. The transactions happen solely between two parties, and are done opaquely, in complete darkness." The current London fix may well be just as fake as the bank interest rate reports that comprised LIBOR proved to be, just a few months ago."
His predictions about the value of gold in the near future are very encouraging and may provide some needed solace to members of our community.
"The price of our pretty yellow metal is about to explode, and it is probably going to soar, eventually, to levels that not even most gold bugs imagine. COMEX gold shorts will be playing the price a bit longer, in an attempt to shake out some remaining independent leveraged longs. Once that is finished, however, and it will be finished soon, the price will start to rise very quickly."
