At least Bill Murphy has the balls to call it like it is. Casey and the other 3 have seemingly been convinced to drop theirs.

From Bill Murphy tonight:

"Our own Chris Powell had to go to Hong Kong to get on CNBC Asia, and only because there is one stand up TV broadcaster guy out there willing to allow some truth to be told regarding the manipulation of the gold and silver markets … and that is Berni Lo.

But, you know all of this, so where am I going and why? It struck me last night just how bad the situation really is after CP sent out an email about Doug Casey going out of his way again to bash the conspiracy gold/silver crowd, which was a veiled broadside to GATA, his second in a month.

Mr. Casey fancies himself as this rogue, outside the box maverick thinker, willing to confront the establishment way of viewing markets. The irony is that he is anything but that and very run of the mill when it comes to really confronting and/or taking on the establishment. He is just one of a number of his ilk who pride themselves in their avant garde viewpoints … but in the end they are nothing more than Casper Milquetoasts kowtowing to the very same people they boast about confronting.

It is very simple. If you have a certain pedigree, and don’t challenge the real power and money in the world, it is acceptable to the establishment to allow some tepid criticism of what is done in Washington and Wall Street via so-called maverick viewpoints. But, there are very distinct boundaries that are not allowed to be crossed. Cross them and you will go from the penthouse to the outhouse. The Washington editor of Barron’s found that out some ten years ago when he wrote a disparaging commentary about Alan Greenspan. Until he repented, he was taken off the "A" party list in Washington.

If you cross the money and power in New York and Washington, you are persona non grata. Casey knows this, which is his business. But, to promote himself as an outside the box, independent maverick thinker puts him in the phony baloney category in my book. He is not alone. He has quality company … and it stunned me these past 15 years to learn the way it really is. Four of the biggest of these self described maverick phonies in America…

Number four: Bill Fleckenstein, who used to be a regular on CNBC

From MIDAS commentary on May 6th, 2002…

Bill Fleckenstein, stock market bear since 1996, gave a speech at the Las Vegas Precious-Metals Conference titled, "Precious-Metallic Armor for the Coming Crisis of Confidence."

From his presentation:

"I believe that the stock market averages are headed much lower. I believe a dollar crisis lies in our future. I believe that the move that we will see for silver will dramatically outpace gold to the upside, though I own both, and I am a director of and own a sizable position in Pan American Silver (PAAS, news, msgs) and one gold stock. However, I do not believe that a so-called plunge protection team actively manipulates the stock market (for the government) And I do not believe that gold is actively manipulated, as is suggested by many gold bulls."

Bill F is another mainstreamer with a closed mind. I doubt he has looked at anything GATA has produced over the years. I have some insight into that because I spoke to him about three years ago. He knew little then and really did not even want to discuss the matter. After hanging up the phone, I went to his website. His only visible sponsor at the time was JP Morgan. Enough said! Would I like to get this Fleckenstein in a debate!

***

Number three: Jim Grant

From this commentary in March of 2009…

A couple of years ago one of Grant’s most popular contributors wrote a very well received piece on T Boone Pickens. Someone whom I know very well here in Dallas thought a great follow-up for Grant would be to do a story on myself and GATA. He went to Grant enthusiastically about the idea. He just mentioned my name and GATA. Grant tore into him and that was it … never to be mentioned again.

***

Number two: Doug Casey

After seeing Doug by himself in New Orleans, CP and I invited him over for lunch. He could not have been nicer, yet has gone out of his way to lampoon GATA ever since…

Casey has been given the evidence of gold market rigging but won't respond to it

http://www.gata.org/node/11304

• The statement made in 2009 by Fed Governor Kevin M. Warsh during GATA's freedom-of-information litigation against the Fed seeking access to its gold records. Warsh disclosed that the Fed has secret gold swap arrangements with foreign banks:
  
  

There's a lot more documentation of the gold price suppression scheme in GATA's documentation archive here:

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

It would have been nice if The Daily Bell's interviewer had been familiar with some of this documentation and had asked Casey about it specifically, item by item, so that the interview might have had more meaning. Since The Daily Bell has reported about complaints of gold market manipulation before, this unfamiliarity during the Casey interview borders on negligence.

For example, is that secret March 1999 IMF report a forgery? Has anyone asked the IMF about it?

Has anyone asked those central bankers if they were misquoted?

Is the Power Point presentation attributed to the BIS a concoction too? Even if someone says so, it probably won't be denied that the BIS trades in gold and gold derivatives every day on behalf of its member central banks, since that trading is confirmed by the BIS' annual reports (unless they're forgeries too). So anyone could always ask the BIS just what it's doing in the gold market and why and for whom.

Pursuit of these questions might be considered research -- as in Casey Research, which, without such research, might better be named Casey Pontificating.

So why won't anyone who doubts gold market manipulation ever discuss these specifics?

One can understand why another gold market analyst frequently quoted by the mainstream financial news media, Jeff Christian of CPM Group, refuses. Christian has acknowledged that most major central banks are clients of his firm. Telling the truth when it might hurt one's business is terribly difficult.

But what's Casey's disqualifying angle?

Since Casey so misleadingly affects to be unaware of the specifics that have been delivered to him so often, a little speculation about him becomes fair. Maybe he refuses to look at, discuss, or debate the documentation because of his commitment to free-market libertarian principles and particularly because of his oft-stated belief that nothing is bigger than the market.

If only it were so. But the power of infinite money creation, particularly infinite money creation in the world reserve currency, is far bigger than any market -- and that is precisely what gold price suppression is about.

In his interview with The Daily Bell, Casey acknowledges the likely motive of central banks in wanting gold and commodity prices lower. But he refuses to acknowledge their opportunity along with the evidence lest faith in markets be shaken.

GATA believes in markets as much as anyone could. Indeed, gold price suppression is a catastrophe for the world precisely because it is the prerequisite for the destruction of all markets, the mechanism by which a few unelected grandees strive to control the price of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world, resulting in their worldwide misallocation.

Markets won't be restored by pretending that they are invincable. In fact, like democracy itself, markets always need protection against totalitarianism, and Casey's libertarian indifference and his belief that if he doesn't know it already it can't be happening are no help in that struggle.

The Daily Bell's interview with Casey is headlined "Doug Casey on Conspiracies, Gold, and the Continuing 'Greater Depression' of the World's Economies" and it's posted here:

http://www.thedailybell.com/30653/Doug-Casey-on-Conspiracies-Gold-and-the-Continuing-
Greater-Depression-of-the-Worlds-Economies

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

Number one, and the biggest bummer of all: Frank Veneroso

I have known Frank since 1980 when I was a broker at Drexel Burnham in New York. Frank was known as the Wall Street Whiz Kid back then … made money every year in up and down markets … was a financial consultant to governments, etc.

Anyway, long story short, it was his 1998 Gold Book which became the foundation for GATA’s discovery of the gold price suppression scheme way back when … based on his detailed research that the central bank gold loans were far greater than acknowledged, then and now. This meant that gold was being fed into the physical market secretly and that central bank gold reserves were far less than reported. Initially, these gold loans were used as cheap money loans by Goldman Sachs et al. But this grew into a price suppression scheme when Robert Rubin went from Goldman Sachs to the US Treasury.

So why is Frank the biggest bummer of all? He knows me very well and what we do. I lived in his home in New Hampshire for a year and promoted his Gold Book. He told a colleague privately many years ago that the gold price suppression scheme is "MUCH BIGGER THAN YOU THINK." And yet, after all of this and years of working together, he said this following the mid-April Gold cartel raids…

"I try to keep my distance from the gold bugs and conspiracy nuts, but in this case I find the move highly suspicious."

You keep all the distance you want Frank. You are the biggest phony and hypocrite of all. You can’t get far enough away from me.

All of those highfalutin phonies ought to pay attention to the venerable Richard Russell who said this yesterday, but then I guess Mr. Russell is a "conspiracy nut" too…

"This crunch job on gold is the crudest manipulation job I've ever seen.

"The Fed wants to kill all signs of inflation to hide the damage they're doing to the middle class. First the Fed leaves food and energy out of the CPI, and then they get the Labor Department to lie about the figures. Their last trick -- smash the price of gold and silver. What are they going to do when the bond market (fearful of inflation) collapses? You can't fool all of the people all of the time."