By Patrick A. Heller
Commentary on Precious Metals Prepared for CoinWeek.com
In 2007 and again in 2009, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), whose website is http://www.gata.org, filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the US Treasury and Federal Reserve seeking documents related to gold swaps going back to 1990.
In response, a modest quantity of largely irrelevant documents were turned over, some heavily redacted, along with statements that neither agency had any other documents that fell within the disclosure rules of the FOIA requests. These blanket denials were quickly proved untrue as the Federal Reserve did not even turn over a copy of a document posted on its own public website. The requests also resulted in a member of the Federal Reserve Board writing a letter defending the lack of disclosure because the Federal Reserve System had gold swap arrangements with foreign banks which were exempt from disclosure. Before the release of this letter, the official Federal Reserve System response was that it did not have gold swap arrangements.
The Freedom Of Information Act exempts the government from turning over documents for a variety of reasons. With a strong suspicion that the Federal Reserve was erroneously claiming exemption from disclosure on many documents, GATA filed suit against the Federal Reserve. The judge required the Federal Reserve to provide her with ten documents where the Fed claimed an exemption from disclosure. After reading them, the judge ordered that the Fed release one to GATA and for it to reimburse GATA for legal costs.
The released document contained the minutes of a 1997 meeting where Federal Reserve officials met with their counterparts from other nations to coordinate their gold swap policies.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is still not finished with its now four-year investigation into possible manipulation of the silver market. With that sign of government inaction on suppression of gold and silver prices, GATA has pushed forward again. On July 24 and 25, it filed a new round of FOIA document requests with the US State Department, US Treasury Department, Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Open Market Committee.
The nature of the requests has expanded to cover any documents involving gold, again from 1990 to date. In the documents filed with the US Treasury, the request specifically stated that it encompassed all of the records of the Treasury’s sub-agencies (e.g. the Exchange Stabilization Fund). In the previous request, the Treasury may have withheld many documents using the subterfuge that GATA had not specifically asked for documents from named sub-agencies.
These requests come in the wake of public furor over the extent of market manipulations beyond the recently unveiled scandal of manipulated LIBOR interest rates. In my judgment, GATA’s timing is opportune, taking advantage of growing distrust of politicians, bureaucrats, and the government in general. Expect the results to take some time. But, when the course of these FOIA requests is finished, I anticipate the release of thousands of pages of documents showing that the government lied to the public, to the detriment of Americans.
If and when this comes to pass, I would not want to be one of the public servants who inflicted such harm onto the people.
To read the new FOIA requests, go to:
http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-FOI-Letter-StateDept-07-24-2012.pdf
http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-FOI-Letter-Treasury-07-24-2012.pdf
http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-FOIA-Letter-Fed2-07-25-2012.pdf
http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-FOIA-Letter-FOMC2-07-25-2012.pdf
Patrick A. Heller owns Liberty Coin Service and Premier Coins & Collectibles in Lansing, Michigan and writes Liberty’s Outlook, a monthly newsletter on rare coins and precious metals subjects. Past newsletter issues can be viewed at http://www.libertycoinservice.com. Other commentaries are available at Numismaster (http://www.numismaster.com under “News & Articles). His award-winning radio show “Things You ‘Know’ That Just Aren’t So, And Important News You Need To Know” can be heard at 8:45 AM Wednesday and Friday mornings on 1320-AM WILS in Lansing (which streams live and becomes part of the audio and text archives posted at http://www.1320wils.com.
Why would GATA be disinterested in the earlier history of CB gold swap activities? Alfred Hayes (see his statements hereinafter) was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 1956-1975, during which time he oversaw the deletion of silver coins from the nation’s largest banking district, sending it to the Treasury for melt disposal to the Silver Users Association, for price suppression goals. In 1975 Hayes left to chair Morgan Stanley International, another high profile metals suppressor. GATA has completely disregarded the heavily documented findings of The Silver Stealers documentary, which show that all major metals suppressors of the last century have all been members of a group unknown to the public—“The Pilgrims Society.” This single organization, sponsored by the British Royal family, is the source of worldwide precious metals suppression. Why would a person who owns a diamond valued at $400 million want Canadian one ounce silver coins with her likeness to be stamped $5? However, numerous other groups and sites have featured The Silver Stealers (Google it!) Read (not “skim over”) the documentary before forming opinion! Alfred Hayes (Pilgrims Society member, leaked lists and Who’s Who listings) boasted—
“I HAVE HEARD OUR SWAPS CRITICIZED AS COVER UPS.” —Alfred Hayes, lecture at Economic Club of New York, April 22, 1963
(Notice this was 27 years before 1990!)
“I AM PARTICULARLY PROUD OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SWAP NETWORK, IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF WHICH I WAS INVOLVED FROM ITS INCEPTION, LINKING THE FEDERAL RESERVE AND 14 OTHER CENTRAL BANKS AND THE BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS. GOLD HAS LONG BEEN VIEWED BY MANY AS A BARBAROUS RELIC AND DEMONETIZING IT AND PHASING IT OUT OF THE SYSTEM COMPLETELY SEEMS TO HAVE A GOOD DEAL OF APPEAL IN SOME QUARTERS.” —Alfred Hayes, speech at International Monetary Fund, August 31, 1975
Source for his statements—Vital Speeches Of The Day.
The Silver Stealers chronicles the suppression of gold also, by The Pilgrims Society; in 1932 Charles Dawes, natural gas magnate who imposed the bogus “Rentenmark” on Germany after the Wiemar collapse, assumed the reins of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which had immense gold dealings in collusion with the Treasury and the FED; the New York Times, November 7, 1933, page 37 feature was titled—“RFC Gold Buying Substantial Sum But Keeps Total a Secret.” I appreciate that to date Coin Week has not censored my posts. Anyone interested in metals suppression should read The Silver Stealers, regardless of who has chosen to not mention it. I receive no compensation for this effort to protect all our ownership rights in metals. If we don’t fight to expose this organization I’ve spent years researching, we may find our metals open to seizure by local police departments, with 80% going to the Treasury Department (run by another Pilgrims Society member!) Because they do exist to effect “the seizure of the wealth necessary,” using government power to scuttle capital formation outside their ranks (Review of Reviews, May 1902, pp557-558!)