GATA Asked to Present at CFTC Precious Metal Hearings in Washington

Although the dollar spent most of it's time rallying during Far East trading yesterday morning, the gold price manged to stay slightly in the plus column right up until the dollar rally ended... which was precisely 12:00 noon in New York... which happened to be the low of the day at $1,100.50 spot. Then, as the dollar inched down, the gold price inched up... basically finishing New York trading at its high of the day of $1,111.10 spot.

Silver spent virtually all of Monday trading within a dime of it's Far East open of $17.07 spot. Kitco reported the New York low price as $16.94 spot... and it's high price of $17.17 spot. Nothing to see here, folks.

For the last ten days or so, there have been lots of cases where the price of gold has risen, even though the dollar has been rising as well. And as I mentioned in the paragraph on gold above... that was the case again on Monday too.

Despite the fact that both gold and silver were in the plus column for most of yesterday... and the Dow rallied into the close as well... it didn't help the precious metals stocks... as they were down 0.46% on the day.

Well, the open interest numbers for Friday were not great in gold. The gold price 'declined' about $20 on that day... and open interest actually rose 4,275 contracts. Considering the price action, it could have been someone establishing a short position. Hopefully Friday's Commitment of Traders will show what happened. Gold volume was reported as 177,575 contracts. On the other hand, the silver price also declined on Friday... but in this case, open interest fell 254 contracts. Was it short covering? Who knows... but that would be my first guess. Volume was 32,123 contracts.

CME Daily Delivery Notice for Monday showed that zero gold and 120 silver contracts are scheduled for delivery tomorrow. All 120 silver contracts were issued by JPMorgan. There were no changes reported in either the GLD or SLV inventories... or U.S. Mint production numbers. But over at the Zürcher Kantonalbank in Switzerland, they reported that their gold ETF added another 23,325 last week... plus another 568,136 ounces of silver into their silver ETF. Their silver ETF is sort of like the Energizer bunny... week in and week out, more and more silver gets added... and not small amounts, either. I thank reader Carl Loeb for those numbers. The Comex-approved depositories reported a huge intake of silver on Friday... 5,033,494 ounces... all of which went into the Brink's, Inc. warehouse. This is the biggest one-day inrease that I can remember in years. I wouldn't read anything into it... at least not yet.

My first order of business today is to retract a story that I posted in my Saturday column. It was a story about EverBank's Metals Select precious metals pool accounts. The writer of that story, while technically correct, had layered on all sorts of motives that apparently don't exist. The bank wrote their conditions the way they did in order to allow them to close troublesome accounts... and was not intended to apply to all accounts simultaneously. EverBank had previously sent out notices to clients saying that they are modifying these three clauses.. which the writer quoted verbatim... and I think it's only fair to allow them to make their changes before making any presumptions.

It was a busy weekend... and I have a lot of stories for you today, dear reader. The first was sent to me by reader Roy Stephens. It's a video interview on BNN of Goldcorp founder, Rob McEwan who, once again, has called for $2,000 gold before the end of the year. The link to the video is here.

The next item is a Reuters piece posted from London on Friday. It notes that investor's growing sensitivity toward sovereign risk is starting to suggest dollar-denominated gold can maintain its strength even as the dollar rises... which is something that I mentioned a handful of paragraphs ago. The headline reads "Gold's cross-currency strength signals its evolution"... and the link is here.

This story is an AP item from Boise, Idaho that's posted over at thestreet.com. This will be wonderful it gets passed...and they're certainly picking the right state to do it in. The headline says it all... "Idaho Bill Permits State Taxes to Be Paid With Silver". I thank Casey Research's Jeff Clark for sending it to me yesterday... and this very interesting story is linked here.

The next gold-related story is courtesy of the usual New York gold commentator. Apparently there were rumours over the weekend of a European version of the IMF that was to be backed by Europe's gold. Buba [Germany's Bundesbank] was fast of the chute saying that any such plan would be strongly resisted. The Bundesbank is really protective of their gold... and GATA consultant [and GoldMoney founder] James Turk, thinks they don't have what they say they own. We'll find that out in the fullness of time... but in the meantime this must read Reuters piece is headlined "Buba opposes backing EMF with gold"... and the link is here.

I 'borrowed' the following story from yesterday's King Report. As I've mentioned several times in the last six months or so, there's a huge overhang of houses that are delinquent... but have not yet been foreclosed on... that will make the housing glut much worse than it already is. "This "shadow market" reflects the increasing lag between defaults and foreclosures. Many lenders are struggling to keep up with the overwhelming number of borrowers who can't make their payments, and they're reluctant to rush repossessed homes onto the market when prices are depressed." This two-page article [which is well worth reading] is from Friday's edition of The Washington Post... and bears the headline "New round of foreclosures threatens housing market"... and the link is here.

Barron's came out with a big story about underfunded pensions in their Monday edition. As the story says... "Promised pensions benefits for public-sector employees represent a massive overhang that threatens the financial future of many cities and states." The headline reads "The $2 Trillion Hole"... and I thank Craig McCarty for sharing it... and the link is here.

This next piece is posted over at Canada's own financialpost.com website. You'd never see a story like this allowed in any major American newspaper... and even I was a bit taken aback when I read it. The first paragraph sets the tone for the whole article... "A good start to understanding the real nature of central banking is the libertarian bumper sticker saying 'Don't steal! The government hates competition.' The whole purpose of the bureaucratic machine called central bank is indeed to steal from us." And from there, it just gets better! I thank reader John Skelton for bringing it to my attention. The headline reads "75 Years of Funny Money"... and it's definitely worth the read... and the link is here.

Here's another story from reader Roy Stephen. This one is from yesterday's edition of the Financial Times in London. As Roy said in a brief note accompanying the link... "these guys must have gonads the size of grapefruit if they think they can get away with this without repercussions". He would be right about that. The headline reads "Congress letter urges action on renminbi". It's not a long read... and I suggest you take the time to run through it, as it dovetails nicely with the story that follows. The link is here.

This story, as I said in the last pargarph, fits right in with the prior Financial Times article. This piece comes from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph in London. The headline reads "Is China's Politburo spoiling for a showdown with America?"... "The long-simmering clash between the world's two great powers is coming to a head, with dangerous implications for the international system... China's premier Wen Jiabao is defiant... "I don’t think the yuan is undervalued. We oppose countries pointing fingers at each other and even forcing a country to appreciate its currency," he said yesterday. Once again he demanded that the US takes "concrete steps to reassure investors" over the safety of US assets." This is a fairly long, but must read story... and the link is here.

This next story is near and dear to my heart. GATA Chairman Bill Murphy was formally invited Friday by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to speak at its meeting in Washington on Thursday, March 25th to examine futures and options trading in the precious and base metals markets. GATA has put great effort and expense into reaching the CFTC on this issue and into suing the Federal Reserve in federal court for information the Fed acknowledges concealing about its gold swap agreements with foreign banks, agreements that likely are at the heart of the gold price suppression scheme. The GATA release [with lots of relevant links] is titled "CFTC invites GATA to speak at March 25th hearing on metals trading"... and the link is here.

Finally... my last item of the day! It's a longish Eric King interview of Jim Rickards of the consulting firm Omnis. He talked at length about China's objectives with gold and about gold demand generally, which he thinks will remain strong even if, as he anticipates, China confines its gold purchases to the production of domestic mines. I have all the time in the world for whatever Rickards has to say. The interview is about 25 minutes long and you can find it at the King World News Internet site here.

From the Russell standpoint, there is only one item that I consider a long-term holding. And that is gold. I note a lot of publicity regarding gold, some of it bullish and some of it cautionary. I am shocked, shocked at some of the ignorant pronouncements by supposed highly-intelligent analysts and investors. They seem to be completely in the dark about the meaing of gold and its history. They fail to understand that only gold is timeless money. In fact, they fail to understand that gold IS money. - Richard Russell

We are sort of in 'no man's land' as far as gold and silver go right now. Gold closed below its 50-day moving average for the second day in a row... and is hugging the $1,100 mark pretty closely. Silver is just holding its own... and barely over it's 50-day moving average. The price has probed its 50-day moving average quite a few times over the last week... but hasn't closed below it... yet. It's impossible to tell which way the bullion banks are going to drive this market. As Ted Butler would say... "Monday was just another day off the calendar." Here's the 6-month gold chart.

Monday was basically a nothing kind of day. The CME's preliminary numbers show yesterday's gold volume at 178,496 contracts... and silver's was reported as a very small 19,726 contracts. Of course we won't have open interest numbers until later this morning.

There wasn't much action in either Far East trading earlier today... or at the London open. Gold is up a few dollars and silver is up a few pennies. As of 4:37 a.m. Eastern time, gold volume traded in the April contract is reported at 20,658 contracts... and silver in the May contract shows only 2,372 contracts traded. Of course these volume numbers will increase dramatically once New York opens for the day... as around 90% of all trading volume in both precious metals occurs during Comex hours... or traded by the New York banks on the Globex when the Comex isn't open.

It could be an interesting day in New York... but, at the moment, nothing indicates that.

I hope your day goes well... and I'll see you tomorrow.