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Using Gold to Protect Yourself In Advance of the Greatest Wealth Transfer of Our Lifetime
by Chris Martenson
Friday, April 4, 2014, 9:44 AM
Executive Summary
- The case for gold's manipulated price, and how that can be used to work to your advantage
- Calculating the "floor" beneath which gold will likely not fall
- The coming Great Wealth Transfer, which almost certainly will occur in our lifetime
- How much to invest in gold
- How to invest in gold
- Exit strategies: when will it make sense to sell your holdings? And what should you exchange them for?
Market Manipulation
Before we can address the idea of storing some of your wealth in gold (and/or silver) we have to visit the topic of market manipulation. As many of you are aware this is an area of exceptional controversy, although I am not entirely sure why given the distressing laundry list of recently proven, and often grotesquely brazen, market manipulations performed by big banks in many other market areas.
Big banks have been proven or alleged to have manipulated energy markets, LIBOR, currency markets, the global oil market, and aluminum, among other things and all of these transgressions happened after they got caught engaging in forgery and fraud during the mortgage swindles of 2005 to 2007.
On one side of the manipulation debate, we might place the Gold Anti-Trust Action (GATA) organization alleging constant official manipulation to suppress the price of both gold and silver, and on the other we might place Jeff Christian, managing director of the metals research firm CPM, whose position is that all price movements can be explained by ordinary market forces.
I happen to be somewhere in between those views as I think both legitimate and illegitimate forces are part of the landscape. But I am heavily tilted towards market manipulation as the explanation for why gold (and silver) tend to move downwards violently from time to time and why the prices for each are not higher than they currently are.
The SEC has a clear definition of market manipulation and I’ve reproduced it here but swapped out the words ‘security’ and ‘stock’ with ‘gold’ to make it that much clearer:
Manipulation
Manipulation is intentional conduct designed to deceive investors by controlling or artificially affecting the market for gold. Manipulation can involve a number of techniques to affect the supply of, or demand for, gold. They include: spreading false or misleading information about gold; improperly limiting [or expanding] the supply of gold; or rigging quotes, prices or trades to create a false or deceptive picture of the demand for gold. Those who engage in manipulation are subject to various civil and criminal sanctions.
I also added the two words "or expanding" because that condition also applies to commodities.
How likely is it that some firms have been trading in gold in such a way as to create a false, rigged, or deceptive picture of gold (and silver) prices? It’s all but proven in a court of law, but don't hold your breath waiting for that final proof, as the US court system has vigorously defended banks from such lawsuits for decades.
I also happen to believe that gold is officially suppressed in price because it's what I would do if I were at the helm of the Fed and cared only for bolstering confidence in the dollar specifically, and fiat currencies generally, making the stock market a more attractive alternative, and also lending credence to political and monetary decisions (for the record, I am merely placing myself in the mind of the enemy here). Given that set of mandates, I would order up some hefty gold suppression because gold has a very bad habit of casting a bright light on rotten monetary and fiscal policy.
Suppressing the price of gold just makes so much sense that I would consider it a form of derelict strategic weakness if the Fed et al. were not doing it.
One of the more important times to suppress the price of gold would be when...
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