The greatest failure of
financial journalism and investment fund management long has been the failure
to put specific questions to central banks about their surreptitious
interventions in the markets, their market rigging. But participants at this
October's New Orleans Investment Conference may have an opportunity to start
correcting that failure.
Astounding as it seems,
former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has agreed to speak at the
conference and to take questions from the audience, including questions about
gold.
Of course there is no
guarantee that Greenspan will answer the questions, or answer them
honestly, rather than claim some obligation to protect the secrecy of Federal
Reserve operations or deflect questions to the U.S. Treasury Department,
whose Exchange Stabilization Fund is explicitly authorized by federal law to
trade secretly not only in gold but also in any foreign currencies and
"other instruments of credit and securities":
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/international/ESF/Pages/esf-inde...
But even if Greenspan was
evasive, the inability to get straight answers about government policy and
practices from a former chairman of the Federal Reserve would be telling.
Of course with his testimony to Congress in July
1998 Greenspan famously acknowledged that the purpose of gold leasing by
central banks was not what they usually claimed -- to earn a little income on
a supposedly dead asset -- but to suppress the monetary metal's price:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/1998/19980724.htm
GATA Chairman Bill Murphy
and your secretary/treasurer will be among the speakers at the conference and
our questions will be submitted to Greenspan. Attend and your questions can
be submitted to him too.
In any case the New
Orleans Investment Conference may be the most comprehensive financial
conference in North America if not the world. It runs for four days, has a
hugely diverse range of speakers, and takes place in a spectacularly scenic and
fun environment, a port city with renowned restaurants.
Already scheduled to
speak at this year's conference are GATA favorities
Frank Holmes of U.S. Global Investors, Sprott Asset
Management's Rick Rule, Euro-Pacific Capital's Peter Schiff, and Charles
Krauthammer, probably the most brilliant newspaper columnist in the United
States.
The conference again will
be held at the beautiful Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel adjacent to the
famous Riverwalk and just a few blocks from Jackson
Square and the French Quarter.
More information about
the conference, including registration, can be found at the conference's
Internet site here:
https://jeffersoncompanies.com/new-orleans-investment-conference/home
