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GATA Challenges BIll O"Reilly on Gold Scam by BUSINESS WIRE GATA Challenges "O'Reilly Factor" Regarding Treasury's Refusal to Answer Gold Questions DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 19, 2001--The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, based in Dallas, has issued a challenge to Bill O'Reilly, the host of the FOX News top-rated cable news show, The O'Reilly Factor. O'Reilly, who professes that he will take on any controversial issue, has ducked the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee's allegations of the manipulation of the gold market by a cartel of bullion banks and a faction of the U.S. Government. A lawsuit raising GATA's charges has been filed in U.S. District Court in Boston by GATA consultant Reginald H. Howe against the Bank for International Settlements; Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan; William J. McDonough, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; bullion banks J. P. Morgan & Co., Chase Manhattan Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Deutsche Bank; and Lawrence H. Summers, former secretary of the treasury, who by law exercised control of the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund, subject only to approval by the president of the United States. GATA Chairman Bill Murphy says: "Bill O'Reilly says he will take on any issue, but he seems afraid to take on the big money interests in America, just like everyone else. GATA supporters have been sending him emails, letters, and faxes for more than two years, and he has not responded to one of them." Recently GATA uncovered the most disturbing evidence yet of manipulation of the gold market. In its response to the Howe lawsuit, the Treasury Department denied any involvement in the gold market since 1978. Yet recently released minutes of the January 31, 1995, meeting of the Federal Reserves Federal Open Market Committee, over which Alan Greenspan presided, quoted the Fed's chief counsel, Virgil Mattingly, as referring to "gold swaps" undertaken by the Exchange Stabilization Fund. U.S. Reps. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and John B. Larson, D-Conn., and Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., and Wayne Allard, R-Colo., among many other members of Congress, have asked Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill for clarification of this discrepancy. But O'Neill, like former Treasury Secretary Summers, has refused to answer Congress on the gold manipulation issue. The people of the United States have entrusted some 261.5 million ounces of their national gold to be held in trust by the Treasury Department, and its disposition is to be determined by Congress. The status of these assets is reported monthly at the Internet site of the Treasury Department's Financial Management Service: http://www.fms.treas.gov/gold/index.html. In August 2000, 3,400 tonnes of this gold at the U.S. Mint at West Point, N.Y., was classified as Gold Bullion Reserve. In September 2000, 1,700 tonnes of this gold was reclassified without explanation as Custodial Gold Bullion. In May 2001, all 3,400 tonnes were mysteriously reclassified, this time as Deep Storage Gold, again without explanation. It is unclear whether this gold is still owned by the U.S. government or whether its ownership has passed to other parties without congressional authorization. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee fears that something is amiss with America's gold! GATA suggests that the Gold Cartel is suppressing the price of gold to conceal problems with the U.S. economy, thereby taking away a warning system of many Americans about making prudent decisions regarding stock market investments! GATA feels strongly that every U.S. citizen should be aware of what has happened. GATA also believes that the O'Reilly program's reporting of the evidence of manipulation of the gold market will attract a large audience. GATA, a federally tax-exempt civil rights and educational corporation, is so confident of its evidence that it will donate $5,000 to the charity of O'Reilly's choice if it is shown to be substantially wrong. But if the O'Reilly program's reporting of GATA's complaint does attract a large audience, GATA will request O'Reilly put to Treasury Secretary O'Neill the questions members of Congress have already queried of him. CONTACT: Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, Dallas, Bill Murphy, 214-522-3411 =============================================== South African Gold-Still Prey for the British Lion by REGINALD H. HOWE Not until 80 years after the war began did Thomas Pakenham publish his authoritative history, "The Boer War" (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1979; Abacus paperback edition, 1992, reprinted 2000, to which all page cites refer). Relying on material largely unavailable earlier, Pakenham emphasizes at the outset that he uncovered four new themes. Two of them are particularly relevant today, as is a third point summarized by the heading "Milner's War," given to Part 1 of the book. \ Cecil Rhodes conceived and funded the notorious Jameson Raid, now generally perceived as the war's opening battle, although it preceded the declaration of war by almost four years. However, prior historians assumed that Rhodes, Alfred Beit, and Julius Wernher, who collectively controlled the richest gold mines of the Rand, were not directly involved in causing the war in 1899. "But directly concerned they were," says Pakenham (p. xvi), who adds (pp. xvi-xvii): "I have found evidence here of an informal alliance between Sir Alfred Milner, the British high commissioner, and the firm of Wernher-Beit, the dominant Rand mining house. It was this secret alliance, I believe, that gave Milner the strength to precipitate the war." The gold mining companies were prepared to endure the certain disruptions and costs of war to secure two important long-term advantages they expected a British administration to deliver: 1) more favorable tax treatment than under President Kruger's Boer government; and 2) a plentiful and reliable supply of cheap black labor. "What made [the gold mining moguls] such wonderful allies was that they repeated over and over again the dictum that there would be no war -- that is, if Britain called Kruger's bluff and sent out the troops," writes Pakenham (p. 89). He adds (id.): "Possibly Rhodes believed his own forecasts. But Beit, Wernher, and Fitzpatrick knew the Boers. The dispatch of British troops would precipitate war." The second new theme underlined by Pakenham is that the heaviest burden of what contemporaries labeled a "white man's war" fell on South Africa's black and coloured populations. Not that the main protagonists did not suffer enormously. In men, money, and materiel, it was Britain's costliest war since the defeat of Napoleon, not to be outdone until World War I. Relatively speaking, the costs to the Boers of their "Second War of Independence" were even higher. But, says Pakenham (p. xvii): "In general it was the African who had to pay the heaviest price in the war and its aftermath." Adding insult to injury, in the Treaty of Vereeniging, ending the conflict, the British agreed to a provision postponing the franchise for blacks and coloureds until after the introduction of self-government, when of course the local white population would not grant it. Perhaps the most startling point to emerge from Pakenham's book is that absent one man, Alfred Milner, British viceroy of South Africa, the war would never have occurred. Motivated by his belief in Britain's imperial role and a personal ambition to rank among its heroes, Milner hoodwinked his own government into waging war over a controversy that it desired to settle by negotiation and compromise. The public justification for the war -- to secure the franchise and fair treatment for the Uitlanders, white and mostly British immigrants who had followed the gold rush into the Transvaal -- was largely a sham. Worse, with the aid of a few like-minded friends as well as the gold-mining interests, Milner deceived his superiors, including the colonial secretary and the prime minister, regarding the actual course and content of his negotiations with the Boer government. Referring to the war as "Milner's War" is no exaggeration. About the time he assumed office, President Kennedy remarked that modern statesmen ought to read Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August." Kennedy's successful handling of the Cuban missile crisis suggests that he profited from his own advice. Pakenham's "The Boer War" is similar must reading for anyone concerned with modern South Africa or today's gold market. Against this history, the gold price fixing allegations of my complaint in U.S. District Court in Boston are scarcely far-fetched. Rather, they read like a new variation on an oldtheme: the plunder of South Africa's gold reserves for the primary use and benefit of British and other outside interests. The gold cabal orchestrated by top officials of the Clinton administration and the Blair government, with maestro Alan Greenspan and assistant Eddie George directing the BIS ensemble, bears uncanny resemblance to the machinations that brought on the Boer War. Motivated by ambition and greed, cloaked in deceit, both schemes set political power and private profits as their goal. Both required cunning, Machiavellian leadership. Elements of Milner are readily apparent in Greenspan, self-described as "among those of us engaged to replace [the gold standard]" -- that is, to create the economic version of alchemy. Reeking of world-class hypocrisy, the International Monetary Fund gold sales were no more proposed for the benefit of poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa than the Boer War was prosecuted to secure the franchise and other democratic rights for the Uitlanders. When the British lion roared its defiance of Hitler through the mouth of Winston Churchill, South Africa stood by it,notwithstanding painful memories of the Boer War. But the British lion is not like the African lion from whose paw Androcles pulled the thorn. Rather, the British lion displays today the same morality that it seems to have taught its most famous Rhodes scholar, recently departed from the White House: "What have you done for me lately?" Speaking at the Indaba African Mining Conference last week, one African government minister warned that democratic governments cannot expect to take permanent root in developing countries unless they deliver measurably improved living conditions within reasonable time frames. Nor can they succeed unless they provide the basic building blocks of republican democracy: the rule of law, free markets, and sound money. Gold mining remains a mainstay of the South African economy, which dominates that of the whole sub-Saharan region. It is hard to imagine anything that would do more to stimulate economic growth in the area than an increase in gold prices from the low levels set by manipulation to their more natural equilibrium now estimated by some at around $500/oz. To most Americans, strong U.S. support both for the new multiracial government in South Africa and for other African nations trying to move toward stable democratic regimes appears unquestionably in the national interest. Few would accept that U.S. policy in the region should be hijacked by the Federal Reserve for the benefit of a few bullion banks, let alone that the Fed and the Exchange Stabilization Fund should conspire with the Bank for International Settlements and the British government to manipulate the free market price of gold. On the birthday of America's Great Emancipator, the new administration in Washington should make clear that its policies toward South Africa and its neighbors will be governed by the law, the Constitution, and the national interest. But it would be a mistake to conclude that the future of South Africa or its gold mining industry rests in the hands of officials in Washington, London, or elsewhere outside South Africa. It is a nation rich in human as well as natural resources, and possessed of considerable spiritual resources as well. More like the United States than Canada or Australia, South Africa never lived comfortably with the British lion, and completely withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1961. Its great military battles are its own, not engagements in foreign lands on behalf of the Crown. Of all the smaller nations in the world, South Africa is perhaps best positioned to withdraw from the IMF and reestablish for itself a monetary system linked to gold. In that event, South Africa's national patrimony would not be dumped into the world market at low prices rigged by others. Nor would its currency be battered below any reasonable measure of its purchasing power parity versus others. Rather, its gold would have to be earned by exports of goods or services or purchased for investment on capital account. By adopting a monetary system like that on which most of the developed world developed, including the United States, South Africa might reasonably look forward to following a similar path, and, at long last, to extinction of the British lion on the Rand. (www.goldensextant.com) |
