A good debate requires three components: a good format, proper moderation, and a topic which is amenable to this type of exercise. As someone who fancies himself to be a good, amateur “debater”, I was watching for those components when I listened to “The Great Debate” between Bill Murphy of GATA and Jeffrey Christian of the CPM Group, and hosted by veteran broadcaster Jim Puplava.

Regrettably, what I heard when I listened to this “debate” was a flawed format, poor moderation, and a topic which (though no fault of anyone) is simply not suited to this form of scrutiny. My apologies to readers for the need to conduct such a detailed review of this exercise. However, as I shall demonstrate clearly, the entire “optics” of the debate change radically, once such a methodical analysis is completed.

Bear with me as I analyze the somewhat tedious procedural fundamentals which must be properly understood. In return, I dangle this “carrot”: when it comes time to focus on the substance of the debate, I promise readers revelations which are arguably of even greater significance than Christian's infamous “100:1” admission.

First, the general rules of debate must be understood. While those unfamiliar with the legal process may view a debate as being very similar to what takes place in a court of law when two lawyers present their “case”, there are many, very significant differences. Most notably, a trial isn't bound by the artificial constraints of a time limit. Thus, (assuming the judge and lawyers perform their duties properly) in a trial there can be no obstructionism, or stalling – since ultimately every facet of the matter will be explored.

In addition to this, a court of law has an extremely long and detailed set of procedural rules (to prevent either side from gaining advantage through illegitimate tactics), and an extremely vigilant and proactive “referee” (i.e. a judge) to enforce this procedural code of conduct.

Conversely, in the rigid constraints of a short, radio debate, and the relatively informal “rules”, it is very easy to pervert the entire exercise - which is why I cited the three necessary components of a good debate. Now let me review these fundamentals specifically.

To begin with, at the beginning of the broadcast Puplava laid out his “rules” for the debate. Most were self-evident, and not necessary to itemize – with one exception: Puplava insisted that neither side attack the “integrity” of the other person. It is here that Puplava clearly failed in his own role. Not only did Puplava fail to prevent Christian from attacking the integrity of both Bill Murphy and GATA (repeatedly), but Puplava failed to add a further detail to his rules.

The reason why “personal attacks” are not permitted in debates is precisely the reason why gutter-politicians use such tactics relentlessly: they are extremely effective in influencing how an audience perceives the substance of what is said by the individual attacked. Once smeared, a debater's entire arguments are diminished in the eyes of the audience.

Christian was allowed to smear both Murphy and GATA in two ways. First of all, Puplava actually allowed Christian to personally accuse Murphy of “lying” (as I shall highlight later). Secondly (and arguably worse), Puplava allowed Christian to say again and again and again that “GATA always distorts the truth” and “GATA always takes things out of context”. Obviously, it is impossible for Christian to ever present evidence on what GATA “always” does, while it poisons the minds of listeners against GATA, and so Puplava should have warned Christian the first time he crossed that line.

On further “violations”, Puplava would have been left with only one option: penalizing Christian by forfeiting his right to say anything further on that particular point. This is why I would have much preferred this to have been a taped event. In that format, a proper moderator could not only have edited out Christian's abusive remarks toward Murphy and GATA, but also the endless series of totally gratuitous remarks which Christian was allowed to make about himself – as he endeavoured to put himself on a pedestal.

That was Puplava's second procedural failure. Not only must a moderator prevent one side from denigrating the integrity of the other, but he must also prevent the opposite: allowing one opponent to portray himself as being inherently superior to the other.

Along with repeatedly implying that both Murphy and GATA were “dishonest”, Puplava allowed Christian to add additional, totally gratuitous remarks – all in the opening minutes of this debate. First (and on many later occasions) he allowed Christian to lecture Murphy, and in a very condescending manner:

“There are facts, there is the truth, and there is not truth...”

Christian followed up his lecture by proclaiming his own superiority:

“I'm a big guy about truth...” and “There is nothing more important than honesty...”

Because it was obviously impossible for Christian to present an objective case that he was a more honest individual than Murphy, Puplava again should have immediately warned Christian to cease such gratuitous posturing. What made Christian's posturing even more farcical was that he blatantly contradicted himself on several occasions in his later remarks (i.e. he lied) – meaning that Christian can add “shameless hypocrite” to his long list of character flaws.

Christian commenced his sins with one of the first statements to come out of his mouth in the debate, and again I quote:

“In all of my years of involvement in the gold market, I have never seen any evidence of any efforts to manipulate or suppress the price of gold.”

Christian offered no caveats of any kind to qualify that remark. I ask readers to file those words away as you evaluate Christian's “honesty” through the remainder of the debate.

In addition to portraying himself as being “morally superior” to Murphy, Christian was given time to boast about his background.

“I worked for Barrick [Barrick Gold Corporation] from its inception. I advised them to hedge in a number of ways which caused them to earn billions of dollars more than they would have earned otherwise...I have over the course of my career advised many central banks – most central banks in the world, and I've advised them about gold, I've advised them about foreign exchange markets, and I've advised them about other things...”

In this respect, Puplava was justified in allowing Christian's boasting – because his professional credentials are relevant in deciding how much weight to attach to Christian's opinions. But Christian is not simply an “expert” about gold and bankers, as he stated so clearly, he is a banker, himself.

If the five years he spent working for Goldman Sachs didn't prove this fact, Christian leaves absolutely no doubt about where his own allegiance lies:

“There's something...I need to say here. I have become extremely concerned with the attitude of certain government officials in going after people in the financial markets in what appears to me to be an effort to find scapegoats. I have seen over-zealous prosecution, and I'm going to take the Constitution's approach that everyone's innocent until proven guilty.”

Given that these are more totally gratuitous remarks by Christian, let me add a few gratuitous remarks, myself. First of all, Wall Street banks spend a hundred times more money lobbying Washington politicians every year than GATA's entire budget since its inception. Yet here we have Jeffrey Christian depicting Wall Street as “victims” being picked-on by big, bad GATA, and “overzealous politicians”.

It is here that Christian provides us with yet another glimpse of the rampant hypocrisy which is a way of life with these bankers. When the bankers were making billions of dollars in illegal naked shorting (and destroying the lives of corporations, their employees, and shareholders) that was nothing but “good, old free-market capitalism”. However, in the 2008 crash (which the banksters engineered, themselves), when they claimed that other market players were engaging in naked shorting of U.S. big-banks, then the banksters immediately ran crying to regulators for protection – but only for themselves.

When Wall Street's over-leveraged, totally fraudulent, multi-trillion dollar Ponzi schemes imploded, they ran crying to politicians for hand-outs/bail-outs. Now that they're trying to collect on their interest-rate swap scams, and their credit-default swap scams – to the tune of trillions of dollars, all we hear out of the mouths of these hypocrites is about “the sanctity of contracts”.

When their trading algorithms allow Wall Street banks to literally rig the markets to such a degree that they were making profits every day (for months at a time), they bragged about their “profits”, and extolled the virtues of this “innovation”. When those same (inherently unstable) algorithms blew-up, and caused massive losses, Wall Street demanded a “do-over” for thousands of legitimate trades – because they were not fast enough to position themselves on the winning side of those trades first.

In the rigged casinos which the United States calls “equities markets”, Wall Street bankers are only allowed to win.

Thus, Jeffrey Christian can dazzle listeners to “The Great Debate” with his status as an “expert”, but let us remember that he is an expert banker. In other words, he belongs to a class of people who are:

1. never capable of looking at any issue objectively

2. believe themselves to be better than everyone else

3. thus believe they are above the law, and entitled to make up their own rules

For those out there who believe I am over-stating my own case, I would ask that readers suspend such a judgment until they have listened to the entire debate, and also invest some time in reading through a few of the dozens of commentaries I have written, documenting the most recent, decade-long crime spree of the Wall Street banks.

Let me (finally) get to the last procedural issue in this debate: that of the topic, itself. Even on the surface, the issue of gold (and silver) manipulation is not one which is suited to such a relatively short debate. To begin with, one side (Bill Murphy of GATA) was in the position of having to positively establish his own proposition, namely the existence of manipulation in precious metals markets.

Conversely, Jeffrey Christian of the CPM Group was in the much easier position of simply trying to rebut (and discredit) Murphy. In other words, the “onus” was on Murphy – and thus the “deck was stacked” in Christian's favor. The obvious parallel is a criminal trial, where is it far more difficult for the prosecution to establish guilt, than for the defendant to merely deny it.

Thus, what we observed throughout the “debate” was that every time Murphy was given a chance to present an item/argument, Christian's response was (literally) to simply deny everything. Even worse, what Christian insisted on doing repeatedly was to continually try to trip Murphy up on tertiary details, and draw attention away from the substance of what Murphy attempted to present.

Naturally, this resulted in a somewhat pointless stalemate. It was impossible (for either side) to verify which side was actually recounting facts, and which side was mistaken (or dishonest). Even with these flaws, however, this didn't mean that the entire exercise was destined to be a waste of time. Puplava could (and did) structure questions which reversed the onus onto Christian – and gave Murphy some rare opportunities to engage in some (productive) “counter-punching”.

In the next part of this review, I will finally be able to focus upon the substantive content of this debate. It is at that point where I will deliver upon my own promise. To whet the appetites of readers, I will leave them with this: the same Jeffrey Christian who categorically stated that he had “never seen any evidence of any efforts to manipulate or suppress the price of gold” spent most of his own time describing (in considerable detail) the various forms of precious metals manipulation, which he had encountered over the course of his career.