Call us traitors if you want, but advocates of free and transparent markets in the monetary metals may be pleased by this week's reports that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has a plea deal with the U.S. government that will convict him of a felony charge of conspiring to obtain and distribute classified information, sentence him to time served in the United Kingdom while resisting extradition, and allow him to return to his native Australia.
While it did not get much attention outside monetary metals circles, that "classified information" – the famous Wikileaks cables, dispatches taken from U.S. government computers by a disgruntled and gender- troubled soldier, Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, and made public in 2011 – included crucial information about U.S. gold price suppression policy.
Some of the cables came from the U.S. embassy in Beijing, were sent to the State Department in Washington, and included English translations of commentaries from Chinese government-controlled news organizations about U.S. gold price suppression policy.
One of those commentaries was attributed to the Chinese newspaper Shijie Xinwenbao (World News Journal), published by the Chinese government's foreign radio service, China Radio International. The U.S. embassy cable's summary of the commentary reads:
"According to China's National Foreign Exchange Administration, China's gold reserves have recently increased. Currently, the majority of its gold reserves have been located in the United States and European countries.
"The U.S. and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold's function as an international reserve currency. They don't want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency.
"China's increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries toward reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the renminbi."
The Wikileaks cables have plenty more like that:
https://www.gata.org/node/10380
https://www.gata.org/node/10416
That is, as early as 2011 the government of China and Chinese people who read or listened to their government news organizations knew all about gold price suppression by the United States and understood its purposes – and the U.S. government knew that China knew.
And still the U.S. government considered this widespread knowledge to be classified.
Meanwhile, of course, monetary metals market analysts in the United States and United Kingdom were still denying gold price suppression policy. Mainstream Western financial news organizations continue to ignore it.
Assange has paid heavily for providing the world with this knowledge, so if he doesn't have to pay anymore, those who benefit from the knowledge may wish him well as he returns to Australia -- not that Australia lately is defending its liberty so well.
The Assange episode evokes a political cartoon drawn by the great Jules Feiffer during the Vietnam war a little more than 50 years ago and published in The Village Voice in New York. The cartoon, consisting of eight or so panels, cited various incidents of the U.S. government's misconduct and deception of its own people, and its last panel concluded: "If you want lies, you go to a government press conference. If you want truth, you steal it."
High school French still suffices: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Maybe better still, plus c'est la meme merde.
About the Author:
Chris Powell is a political columnist and former managing editor at the Journal Inquirer, a daily newspaper in Manchester, Connecticut, USA, where he has worked since graduating from high school in 1967. His column is published in newspapers throughout Connecticut. He is also secretary/treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc., (GATA) which he co-founded in 1999 to expose and oppose the rigging of the gold market by Western central banks and their investment bank agents.
