Is the COMEX just a farce ?

Bill Murphy and Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) gave silberinfo the following exclusive interview:

silberinfo:
Our last interview dates back to March 2005. Bill and Chris, what has changed in the meantime for GATA and the work you do?

 

B. Murphy:
1. We held an international gold conference on April 18th, 2008 right outside of Washington, D.C. 
2. We filed freedom of information requests to the Fed and US Treasury, asking questions about gold swap operations. The Fed withheld hundreds of pages of information, redacting hundreds of pages of others. The Treasury gave a non-response. When we queried specifically about the Exchange Stabilization Fund, they responded about the Exchange STABILITY Fund. Is the US Treasury truly an Abbott and Costello operation?

 

C. Powell:
More evidence of central bank intervention in the markets has been disclosed, and opinion in the precious metals markets increasingly is coming around to acknowledging the intervention.

 

silberinfo:
What are your thoughts regarding the present financial crises with respect to gold?

 

B. Murphy:
It is bad and going to get worse. On January 31, 2008 GATA placed a full-page color ad in the Wall Street Journal, which you can read at:

 

http://www.gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal

 

Here are three sentences from our ad: "But to suppress the price of gold is to disable the barometer of the international financial system so that all markets may be more easily manipulated. The manipulation has been a primary cause of the catastrophic excesses in the markets that now threaten the whole world.

 

"Surreptitious market manipulation by government is leading the world to disaster."

 

There was not one press inquiry as to what GATA knew and what we were talking about. Some day this ad will receive enormous attention.

 

C. Powell:
If gold had been allowed to trade in a free market, it would have warned, via its rising price, of the excessive credit in the world financial system and the debasement of the money supply and maybe gold's warnings would  have been heeded.

 

silberinfo:
It is said that at the moment a lot of gold is demanded and bought. Still the price of gold in USD is significantly lower than in March, although the crisis has escalated since then. Is this the case because of continued market manipulations, or are other reasons playing a role here?
 
B. Murphy:
I receive reports EVERY day of gold coin shortages in countries around the world --rom Germany, to Argentina, to Canada, to England, all of Asia, etc. Months ago the US Mint announced it was curtailing production of US gold coins.