GATA - Gold Anti Trust Action Committee

Gold Anti Trust Action Committee spat with Jeff Christian getting personal

The war of words between GATA and CPM's Jeff Christian is getting increasingly bitter coming to a head after a debate at the Silver Summit conference in Spokane (Link to video of the debate attached).

Author: Lawrence Williams
Posted: Sunday , 23 Oct 2011

LONDON -

The war of words between the Gold Anti Trust Action Comittee, GATA, and CPM Group managing director and founder Jeff Christian seems to be escalating. First Christian accused GATA in an interview as "a group that makes money by basically bilking gold investors out of fees to support GATA so they don't have to get legitimate jobs." And most recently, after a debate between Bill Murphy of GATA and Christian at the Silver Summit meeting in Spokane, GATA secretary Chris Powell accused Christian of "graduating from his usual distortions to outright contrivance."
There is obviously little love lost between GATA and Christian. The former is convinced that Governments, Central Banks and their banking sector allies and some major gold mining companies are, or have been, complicit in suppressing the global price of gold, whereas Christian is firmly on the side of the status quo which disputes this.

Indeed many in the establishment mainstream will not openly recognise that GATA maybe has a point - even though it has certainly produced documentation obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act which would on the face of things appear to support at least part of its case. Indeed if one assumes that Governments as a matter of course manipulate currency exchange rates, then there is logic in their manipulating the gold price too as many throughout the world consider gold as money (currency) and that a rise in the gold price thus equates to a depreciation in currencies - notably the US dollar. Why major gold mining companies might also be complicit in this suppression is perhaps a little more obscure.

But recently Gillian Tett, the award winning U.S. Managing Editor of the Financial Times, a newspaper which is frequently the subject of GATA opprobrium as being on the side of the establishment, did seem to concede that GATA's views should not be dismissed out of hand. "For my money, though" says Tett, " I think there are at least two reasons why it would be foolish simply to deride or ignore GATA. Firstly, some of its points have at least a grain of truth. Even if you find it hard to believe that central bankers would be dastardly enough to create a plot -- or competent enough to do what GATA claims -- the fact is that global commodity markets are pretty murky, central banks are often opaque, and Western rhetoric about "free" markets is often hypocritical. Those issues merit far more debate, not just among journalists but central bankers too."

One has to give Christian credit for potentially throwing himself to the wolves at the Silver Summit - very much a pro-GATA group. Indeed it is probably doubtful if any in the audience would have been sympathetic to Christian's views. There is very much a divide between GATA-friendly conferences and those which the mainstream commentators normally attend, although it is interesting that the principal GATA view proponents seldom attend the latter, and vice versa, but whether this is because they are not welcomed or choose just not to go is perhaps uncertain. To a relatively impartial observer though the GATA conferences are certainly more fun - at least judging by the recent GATA event held here in London - even if being rather more than one-sided in the views expressed!

In truth, the actual debate at the Silver Summit was, in the writer's view, a little disappointing with perhaps insufficient time, or opportunity, for either party to make any killing arguments one way or the other. A link to the video follows so readers can make their own judgements: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hnIqE1_ZGU


Mineweb.com - The world's premier mining and mining investment website Gold Anti Trust Action Committee spat with Jeff Christian getting personal - POLITICAL ECONOMY | Mineweb

Share