Our friend Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital in London, among the few gold advocates lately given time on CNBC, points out that the late, great Swiss gold banker Ferdinand Lips made in his 2001 study "Gold Wars" the same observation made at the March 25 hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission by CPM Group executive Jeffrey M. Christian -- that the leverage in the gold market is around 100 to 1, that each ounce of gold is supporting as much as 100 ounces of gold trading.
Lips, whose work is preserved by the Lips Institute (http://lips-institute.ch/) and whose books are available at a page at the institute's Internet site (http://lips-institute.ch/en/books/), wrote in the book's "Part IV: Gold Rush and the Gold War":
"It is estimated that the 'paper gold' market in 1999 is many times larger than the actual physical market. Estimates range from a minimum of 90 to an excess of 100 paper-ounce contracts being written for every ounce of physical gold that changes hands. This is not only mind-boggling, or a Frankenstein monster, as James Dines calls it, but a king-size horror trip."
Last week Davies gave MiningMaven.com an interview about the gold and silver markets whose first part is 17 minutes long and mentions GATA's work. You can listen to it here:
http://www.miningmaven.com/blog/51-blog/169-gold-focus-part-1-ben-davies...
Chris Powell
Secretary / Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee
www.GATA.org
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