Here is the record of $US Gold's year end spot future close over the past five years:
Gold closed below $US 300 for the first time since March 1985 in November 1997. Since then, as you know, the price has seldom regained the $US 300 level, and when it has, it has not been able to stay above it for long. But anyone who still harbours doubts whether the $US price of Gold is being manipulated should take a few minutes and contemplate the set of figures above.
While you are contemplating, give some thought to what has happened in ALL other financial markets over the same time period. Consider the gyrations in stock, bond, currency, and commodity markets over the same time period. Consider the fantastic fortunes made, and then sadly (in most cases) lost. Consider the debt loads, and the bankruptcies, and the civil and military strife.
Gold, in $US terms and ONLY in $US terms, has sailed through it all - on a year end to year end basis - without registering any more than the most placid of ripples on the surface of an economic and political world which has been torn apart and rebuilt repeatedly.
Having considered all this (much more easily done if you have been a Privateer subscriber over part or all of this period), ask yourself a simple question: "How much longer can 'they' keep it up?"
The main motivation for keeping the $US Gold price "quiet" is very simple. The $US has been up to this point the world's sole reserve currency. The entire global financial edifice is built upon it.
An engineer can build a bridge on an inadequate or shifting foundation. When a load is put upon the bridge, it collapses. As a foundation for a global financial system the U.S. Dollar is both inadequate and shifting, but up until recently, there has been no load put upon it. The load has been borne by the rest of the world, which have poured their real economic substance into bracing the structure every time it "wobbled".
Well, the structure, the U.S. economy itself, is wobbling very badly indeed as we enter 2002. Worse, an alternative structure is emerging, that of the European Union and its currency, the Euro. The Euro is also designed as a reserve currency, and it does not have the decades-long legacy of debts and deficits which encrust the U.S. Dollar.
This does NOT mean that the Euro will succeed where the Dollar has failed. At present, the only difference between the two is that Europe recognises Gold as an "official reserve" behind their currency while the U.S. does not. But the Euro is NOT CONVERTIBLE into Gold at any given and fixed rate of exchange. Unless and/or until it is, it cannot escape - sooner or later - the fate which is fast catching up with the Dollar.
But even without the many grave problems and dangers facing the global financial system at present, the mere fact that an alternative to the Dollar now exists as a CASH currency will be, in time, enough to topple the Dollar off its inadequate and shifting foundations. The continuation of Gold manipulation in U.S. Dollar terms will not be possible under such a situation. The unmistakeable signal that the situation is developing would be another Gold surge above the $US 300 level - this one sustained.
We here at The Privateer would be absolutely astonished if this does not happen in 2002. The only question is when, and what happens after that? Stay tuned. We fully expect to change the name of this page from "The Gold Bottom This Week" to "The Gold BULL MARKET This Week" - soon.
In the meantime, a very HAPPY NEW YEAR to all. We are greatly looking forward to 2002.