Jim Rickards - The Golden Conspiracy

Jim Rickards writes this article appearing at The Daily Reckoning repeating a theme he has talked about before. Basically, he says that the reason that there is manipulation in the gold market to hold down the price is because China is trying to "play catch up" with other nations who have much larger gold reserves and needs a lower gold price to do that. Below are a few excerpts from his article and then a few added comments.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Is there gold price manipulation going on? Absolutely. There’s no question about it. That’s not just an opinion.

There is statistical evidence piling up to make the case, in addition to anecdotal evidence and forensic evidence. The evidence is very clear, in fact.

I’ve spoken to members of Congress. I’ve spoken to people in the intelligence community, in the defense community, very senior people at the IMF. I don’t believe in making strong claims without strong evidence, and the evidence is all there.

I spoke to a PhD statistician who works for one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. I can’t mention the fund’s name but it’s a household name. You’ve probably heard of it. He looked at COMEX (the primary market for gold) opening prices and COMEX closing prices for a 10-year period. He was dumbfounded.

He said it was is the most blatant case of manipulation he’d ever seen. He said if you went into the aftermarket, bought after the close and sold before the opening every day, you would make risk-free profits.

He said statistically that’s impossible unless there’s manipulation occurring."

. . . . .

"Now, where is the manipulation coming from?

There are a number of suspects but you need look no further than China.

China wants to do what the U.S. has done, which is to remain on a paper currency standard but make that currency important enough in world finance and trade to give China leverage over the behavior of other countries."

. . . . .

"The rules of the game also say you need a lot of gold to play, but you don’t recognize the gold or discuss it publicly. Above all, you do not treat gold as money, even though gold has always been money."

. . . . .

"Right now, China officially does not have enough gold to have a “seat at the table” with other world leaders. Think of global politics as a game of Texas Hold’em."

. . . . .

"Here’s the problem: If you took the lid off of gold, ended the price manipulation and let gold find its level, China would be left in the dust. It wouldn’t have enough gold relative to the other countries, and because the price of gold would be skyrocketing, they could never acquire it fast enough. They could never catch up. All the other countries would be on the bus while the Chinese would be off."

. . . . .

"The price is being suppressed until China gets the gold that they need. Once China gets the right amount of gold, then the cap on gold’s price can come off. At that point, it doesn’t matter where gold goes because all the major countries will be in the same boat. As of right now, however, they’re not, so China has to catch-up."

Please click here to read the full article by Jim Rickards

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My added comments: This new article by Jim Rickards contains quite a bit of information he has mentioned before regarding why China is building up their gold reserves but also has some new information readers should take note of. For example, Jim says in this article that although he has predicted an eventual move to replace the US dollar as global reserve currency, for now the US is determined to maintain the US dollar as the global reserve currency. This is completely consistent with what other experts we have featured here have told me about the US dollar.

What we watch for here are any signs that real major change in the current US dollar based monetary system is starting to take place. If and when that does happen, people will need to understand what is happening, why its happening, and how it may impact their lives. It's why I continue to keep this blog alive. A major change to the monetary system would dwarf the other issues we see in the daily headlines in terms of real impact of the lives of all of us. We will just continue to watch for signs of such change here until it either happens or becomes obvious it is not going to happen for a long time into the future. The verdict is still out on the potential timing for a major monetary system change. 

Added notes: Readers here who may be skeptical that central banks may at times intervene in the gold market to suppress the price may find the two part article linked below by Ronan Manly interesting. He has obtained formerly confidential official documents that illustrate that central banks will at times step into the gold market to try and suppress the price when they feel it serves their interests. These documents pertain to secret discussions by central banks held in the late 1970's and early 1980's about the possible need to intervene in the gold markets to suppress the price. At that time inflation was somewhat out of control and gold was rocketing higher in response. 

This is not surprising to those who research this issue, but may be surprising to those new to the concept that officials might intervene in various markets. The formerly confidential documents revealed in these articles are also very consistent with what I have found in my research here. Central banks are slow to take actions and tend to discuss and debate potential actions for a long time before actually doing anything. They also illustrate how it is difficult to get consensus to take action as well because different nations stake out opposing views. It is even harder to get consensus at something like the IMF where there are 180 nations involved. In this case, it was the BIS (Bank for International Settlements) trying to get the various central banks to work together. 

Here are the links to the Ronan Manly articles:

New Gold Pool - Part I

Example of document from Part I on discussion of new gold pool  --- page 2

New Gold Pool - Part II

Added news note: Bloomberg - Ex-Trader linked to Deutsche Bank Admits fraud in Manipulating Precious Metals

• - Liew admits to fraud in gold, silver and other metals trading
• - Defendant learned to rig prices from co-workers, filings say