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Gold Price Manipulation More Blatant
 | By Patrick A. Heller, Market Update
March 17, 2009 |
On Friday, March 6, gold lease rates turned negative for the day. What that means is that anyone who wanted to lease gold would actually be paid a fee in addition to getting a free gold loan.
No sane person would choose to lose money loaning physical gold, in addition to the risk of never getting the gold back from the other party. However, if someone (such as the U.S. government) wanted to suppress the price of gold, this is one tactic to try to accomplish that purpose.
I can come to no other conclusion than that a large quantity of physical gold surreptitiously appeared on the market on March 6 with the sole purpose to drive down the price of gold. The quantities were large enough that they almost certainly could not come from private parties. With most of the world's central banks now being net buyers of gold reserves, they would not be the source of this gold. By process of elimination, the suspicion falls upon the U.S. government as the ultimate party responsible for this blatant action to manipulate the price of gold.
Of course, the U.S. government would not want to be identified as the cause of this leasing anomaly. Instead, such manipulation was almost certainly conducted by multiple trading partners of the U.S. government.
This sledge hammer tactic worked at driving the price of gold further away from the $1,000 level - at least temporarily. Last week, spokesmen for a number of troubled U.S. companies were suddenly issuing statements about a return to profitability (such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase) or not needing further government bailouts (such as General Motors). Stock values climbed as gold's price retreated.
But (and there was always a but), these massive efforts to suppress the price of gold seem to be running out of steam. First off, these "positive statements" had serious qualifiers such as the chairman of Citigroup claiming that, ignoring extraordinary items like bad loans, the bank earned an operating income in the first two months of 2009.
Then insurance company AIG bowed to pressure and revealed that a huge portion of the $150+ billion in bailout funds it had received had really been passed along as bailout money to other companies (including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase). In fact, almost all of this money was redirected to the U.S. government's trading partners who probably have been complicit in the manipulation of the gold price.
Once the public learned that such companies have received more federal government bailout money that previously revealed, the stock market rally stalled. The price of gold started to recover. Unless the U.S. government can come up with another tactic quickly, I expect the price of gold to generally rise over time.
In the meantime, demand for physical gold has taken off again. The U.S. Mint is so far behind at meeting demand for bullion gold and silver American Eagle issues that it last week announced an indefinite suspension of plans to strike 2009-dated proof and uncirculated versions for collectors. Even further, the U.S. Mint also announced that it would not even accept orders from primary distributors for any gold or silver Eagles this week.
On the wholesale market, supplies of gold and silver American Eagles quickly disappeared. The premiums of these coins shot upward. Some retailers now have to decline orders as they don't know when they might be able to fill them or what premiums they will have to pay to acquire merchandise. My earlier prediction that by the end of April it would become almost impossible to find any physical gold or silver bullion-priced items for reasonable delivery is starting to come true.
At the American Numismatic Association's National Money Show in Portland, Ore., this past weekend, demand for U.S. gold $10s and $20s was still solid. With some such collector coins now trading at all-time high prices, however, some dealers are advising their customers to consider selling or swapping for gold bullion. As a consequence, I think most of the surge in prices has already occurred. It might be a good time to take a profit.
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