Bill Buckler publisher of the weekly financial letter The Privateer Writes

Bill Buckler publisher of the weekly financial letter The Privateer (http://www.the-privateer.com), this week headlines his commentary "ALL Markets Are Manipulated."

Buckler writes: "It is interesting that many of the same people who are now abandoning stock markets because of their 'volatility' over the last few years are the same people who become affronted at the slightest mention of the possibility of precious metals price manipulation. A moment's serious contemplation should make things clear. The precious metals and gold in particular have always been the 'alternative' to government promise based on and created out of thin-air money. As such, the precious metals have always been Public Enemy No. 1 as far as the money manipulators are concerned. Anyone who aspires to intervention in an economy and the political power that it gives is and always has been an enemy of gold. As long as there is a central bank manipulating money and interest rates, all markets are manipulated by definition. To imagine that the precious metals would be overlooked is ridiculous."

To the best of our knowledge Buckler has never mentioned GATA, despite the reams of documentation published over the years and constantly being developed at our Internet site (http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21). But Buckler is to a great extent a technical analyst of markets, and it is especially hard for such people to acknowledge market manipulation because it greatly diminishes the value of their work if it doesn't make that work utterly meaningless.

The same with Jim Grant, publisher of the Grant's Interest Rate Observer letter and perhaps the only gold advocate with enough respectability to be frequently invited to speak at respectable forums, like CNBC. Grant may have remained this respectable by refraining from too much pointed criticism of the financial powers.

But interviewed this week on CNBC by Maria Bartiromo, Grant got very pointed indeed. The Federal Reserve, Grant said, "is in the anti-capitalism business. ... The Fed ought to get out of the manipulation business. ... They ought to forswear the intervention in markets." Grant strongly implied, for what may have been the first time, that among the markets being manipulated and intervened against is the gold market. The interview is six minutes long and it's posted at CNBC here:

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000080414

GATA Chairman Murphy, a former futures trader, seems to have been the first to complain about gold market manipulation when he opened his Internet site of financial commentary, LeMetropoleCafe.com, in the fall of 1998. Long before that, silver market analyst Ted Butler was complaining to anyone who would listen about silver market manipulation. For some years now GATA people have remarked upon various incidents of intervention and manipulation and have asked each other: Could it get any more obvious?

We could hardly believe it, but yes, it has gotten more obvious. What happened last September, the simultaneous devaluation of the Swiss franc and the smashing of the price of gold when it should have risen as a competitive currency, was exceeded in brazenness by the smashing of the precious metals on February 29 this year as money creation for bailouts in Europe exploded.

Maybe these things have shoved Buckler and Grant toward the manipulation camp. God only knows -- and we can't be eager to find out -- what it will take to accomplish the same with people like celebrity investor Jim Rogers, CPM Group's Jeff Christian, and Kitco.com analyst Jon Nadler, and with news organizations like The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Associated Press, Reuters, and Bloomberg News.

But as the psalm advises, this is the day the Lord has made, so let us rejoice and be glad in it, what with the return of the two somewhat prodigal sons and the hope it raises that still more will be coming around as central banking blows what remains of its cover.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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