From GATA

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

Submitted by cpowell on 02:54PM ET Monday, December 14, 2009. Section: Daily Dispatches

5:50p ET Monday, December 14, 2009

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Nouriel Roubini, the celebrity economist, has just published a denunciation, "The New Bubble in the Barbarous Relic That Is Gold":

http://www.roubini.com/analysis/91695.php

While for the moment Roubini's essay is fully available only to clients of his consulting firm, Roubini Global Economics, it already has generated some vigorous responses whose quotation from Roubini seems extensive enough to be fair.

One is by Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky of QB Asset Management in New York, who have generously allowed GATA to post it here:

http://www.gata.org/files/QBAssetManagement-12-14-2009.pdf

The other is by the pseudonymous Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge, known in real life as Dan Ivandjiiski. It's headlined "Roubini Blasts 'The Barbarous Relic,' Recommends Spam over Gold," and you can find it here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/roubini-blasts-barbarous-relic-recommen...

To add a couple of criticisms of Roubini:

1) As GoldMoney founder, Free Gold Money Report editor, and GATA consultant James Turk reminded the world six years ago -- http://www.fgmr.com/barbarous-relic-its-not-what-you-think.html -- John Maynard Keynes originated the phrase "barbarous relic" not in regard to gold itself but in regard to the gold standard.

2) Criticisms of gold's utility like Roubini's usually fail to answer what may be the most compelling question in the matter. If gold really is so useless and irrelevant, why does the U.S. government undertake so desperately to suppress its price? (See, for starters: http://www.gata.org/node/8052.) But then while presuming to know nearly everything about gold, Roubini does not seem to know, for example, that the Federal Reserve recently admitted having gold swap agreements with foreign banks and insisted that these agreements remain secret. Imagine the sensation if a celebrity economist ever took note of that in an interview with the Financial Times or even People magazine.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.