In a message dated 11/11/01 6:42:19 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< http://www.goldensextant.com/commentary19.html#anchor5941 >> What's New CURRENT MPEG COMMENTARY � November 11, 2001. Thank You, GATA Soldiers, Merci! With his usual efficiency, Chris Powell, GATA's stalwart secretary-treasurer, issued a report on the November 5 hearing late the same evening, after driving home to Connecticut from Boston. Our friend Vronsky has posted a copy at Gold-Eagle. In addition, Chris posted copies of two other stories, one by CBS.MarketWatch and the other by Dow Jones, both organizations having sent reporters to the hearing. I have nothing to add to these reports. The next words of significance about the case will come from Judge Lindsay. The purpose of this commentary is simply to express my thanks to all those who have helped in the effort so far. I could not have brought this case at all, let alone brought it through last Monday's hearing, without the help of many people. Some are obvious: GATA chairman Bill Murphy, Chris, my business partner Bob Landis, and my discovery team, Mike Bolser, Jim Turk and Adam Hamilton. But no army goes very far with all officers and no troops. And in small armies especially, even the troops have to show the initiative of command. So it is in the GATA army, with many contributing not just money, but also time and effort to tracking down leads and information on many different fronts. Another characteristic of the GATA army is its cosmopolitan nature: people -- some richer, some poorer -- of many different nations, races and religions, all cooperating to a common purpose: the defense of free markets, which is nothing less than the defense of liberty itself. The GATA army knows what it is fighting for and why. Its soldiers know the stakes in their war as well or better than any army that ever the took the field. They also know the odds, and sad to say, they know that that the campaign ahead will be at best extraordinarily difficult. None of this will be news to visitors to The Golden Sextant, but all of it was underscored in the many e-mails that I received both before and after the hearing. Some of these messages of support and encouragement arrived en fran�ais, which explains part of the title of this commentary. A group of French gold bugs congregates in le forum "Echo Bay" du site Boursorama ( www.boursorama.fr). Since this forum originated when Echo Bay Mines was a hot gold stock, they are veteran gold bugs, a fact made even more obvious by the name they call themselves: les insoumis-teigneux, which translates into rebellious (or unsubjugated) bastards. In preparing for the hearing, I came across what some might describe as historical trivia, but it may be interesting nonetheless, particularly to my French friends. What is more, some may find in these facts a deeper meaning -- one appropriate not only to today but also to the two big holidays soon to come. All three of these holidays mark historic turning points: the birth of Christianity; the birth of a colony that would challenge an empire and change the world; and the end of a war that brought carnage on a scale never before witnessed and set in motion political and monetary events that are still unfolding. Indeed, viewed in historic perspective, both the war on terrorism and the war on gold are in many ways unfinished business of World War I. But back to my story. For those who have not seen it, there is a picture of Boston's spectacular new federal courthouse on the homepage of its website. Also featured there is the building's signature quotation: "JUSTICE IS BUT TRUTH IN ACTION." Attributed to Louis D. Brandeis in 1914 just before he left the practice of law to become the first person of Jewish faith to sit on the Supreme Court, the quotation is prominently inscribed in the main-entry rotunda at the base of the stairway leading up to the entrances to the courtrooms. According to the brochure detailing the many quotations adorning the building, this particular quotation came from a speech involving "an issue of complex economics, a topic with which Brandeis grappled throughout his career." It was chosen for prominent display in the new courthouse to emphasize "the fact-finding role of the courts in the pursuit of justice." ( S'il vous pla�t, les Fran�ais, ne vous mettez pas � l'avance de moi.) Having not yet found the speech from which the quotation was drawn, I cannot say precisely what economic questions the future Justice Brandeis was talking about. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations attributes "Truth is justice in action" to Benjamin Disraeli in a speech to the House of Commons, 11 February 1851. Un petit myst�re. But scholars are agreed. Le vrai auteur, c'est Joseph Joubert. M. Joubert (b.1754; d.1824), a philosophe who lived through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, published nothing during his lifetime. He wrote his thoughts on scraps of paper. After his death, these papiers de la malle were collected, arranged and published privately in 1838 by his friend, Chateaubriand, a famous writer and statesman of the era. In 1791, Chateaubriand had visited America, where he explained his intention to search for a "Northwest Passage" to an astonished President Washington. The book of Joubert's thoughts was later re-edited in several editions by his nephew, Paul Raynal. Many other editions followed, including a well-known English translation by Henry Attwell in 1877. A number of different editions of Pens�es de Joubert are collected in the French literature section of Harvard's Widener Library. The organization and numbering of the chapters and verses is not consistent from one edition to another, nor are the various editions equally comprehensive. From M. Raynal's 5th edition (Paris, 1869), chapter 15 (De la libert�, de la justice et des lois), verse 16: "La justice est la v�rit� en action." Here are some other nearby verses in the same chapter, plus my attempts at translations. Verse 15: "Libert�! libert�! En toutes choses justice, et ce sera assez de libert�." ("Liberty! Justice in all matters, and that will be enough liberty.") Verse 17: "La justice est le droit du plus faible. Elle est en nous le bien d'autrui, et dans les autres notre bien." ("Justice is the right of the weakest. It is for us the best of others, and for them our best.") Verse 18: "La justice sans force, et la force sans justice: malheurs affreux!" ("Justice without force, and force without justice: horrible misfortunes.") The inscription by the other main stairway is also from a speech by another famous Supreme Court justice while he was still in practice in Massachusetts. In 1881, shortly before his appointment to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Oliver Wendell Holmes gave a series of lectures on the common law, including his famous maxim: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Almost eerie in its similarity is Joubert's thought on the same subject in chapter 15, verse 30: "Les meilleures lois naissent des usages." (The best laws are born from established customs.") It is a measure of the universal nature of true justice that one French philosopher should express so closely the sentiments of two great Supreme Court justices, and that these would be the same sentiments chosen years later by federal judges in Boston for special prominence inside their new courthouse in the "cradle of American liberty." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, would likely have admired Joubert's talent for turning a clever phrase. It is a talent that the elder Holmes passed on to the younger, and it became a hallmark of his legal opinions. "Great cases like hard cases make bad law." With this sentence in Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400 (1904), the first major Sherman Act case to come before the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Holmes launched into his first great dissent. Although the government won the case in a 5-4 decision, the trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt, outraged that his new appointee had failed to support the government's position, thundered: "I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that." But if there were any problem with the justice's backbone, it came from a Civil War mini� ball lodged nearby. After his third wartime enlistment expired, the young brevet colonel did not sign up for a fourth, feeling that he had done his part. It was a decision that would trouble Holmes in later life. But when the "Great Dissenter" died in March 1935, three years after retiring from the Court at age 91, many of his countrymen felt that the greatest living American had just passed from the stage. At his burial in Arlington National Cemetery, with the President and all the Justices looking on, eight infantrymen fired a volley for each of his Civil War wounds: Ball's Bluff, Antietam, Chancellorsville. On the Supreme Court together for sixteen years, Holmes and Brandeis frequently joined each other in dissenting opinions that in future years commended themselves to a majority of the Court and became law. The first wiretapping case, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), arose out of efforts to enforce the Volstead Act during Prohibition. On a five-to-four vote, in a ruling that would stand for almost forty years until Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 547 (1967), the Court held that wiretapping did not violate the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. The two Massachusetts justices (along with Justices Butler and Stone) filed separate dissents, and this time Mr. Justice Brandeis got off the more memorable lines (277 U.S. at 479, footnote omitted): Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberties by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. Today we honor all members of the military. In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Great War ended. The date at once became a day of remembrance for those lost in the war "to save democracy" and "to end all wars." After arrival of the American Expeditionary Force on the Continent, in ceremonies at the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette in Paris on July 4, 1917, Colonel Charles E. Stanton, in a statement often attributed to General John Pershing, announced: Lafayette, nous y voil�. Lafayette, we are here. Among the members of the AEF -- pour aider les poilus -- was my great uncle. Plus �a change.... Merci pour me supporter (et mon fran�ais). � October 2, 2001. Court Hearing Rescheduled to November 5, 2001 On October 1, 2001, Judge Lindsay entered the following SCHEDULING ORDER: The clerk has scheduled for hearing, on Tuesday, October 9, 2001, the several motions to dismiss this action. Because of the number of such motions and the myriad issues they raise, I will require more time to study the parties' submissions. Accordingly, the hearing in this matter is rescheduled to Monday, November 5, 2001, at 2:00 p.m. SO ORDERED. /s/ Reginald C. Lindsay, United States District Judge September 29, 2001. Notice re Court Hearing on October 9, 2001 On September 27, 2001, Judge Lindsay rescheduled the hearing on defendants' motions to dismiss from 3:30 PM to 2:30 PM on Tuesday, October 9, 2001. The hearing will take place in Courtroom No. 11, 5th floor, United States Courthouse, Boston. New security procedures require presentation of two photo IDs to gain entrance. On the same day, the judge denied Plaintiff's Motion for Leave to File Second Affidavit and Plaintiff's Motion to Supplement Plaintiff's Second Affidavit, so those documents will not be before the court in connection with the hearing on the motions to dismiss. September 27, 2001. Guest Commentary: Murray Pollitt on the Events of September 11, 2001 [Note: Murray H. Pollitt, P. Eng., is a Canadian broker and mining engineer long active in both the investment and operational sides of the gold mining industry. A little over a year ago, Mr. Pollitt gave The Golden Sextant permission to publish his Open Letter to Central Bankers. Now he has graciously permitted us to publish his recent letter to investment clients.] More of man's inhumanity to man, presented with galvanizing intensity. In the aftermath, inevitable questions, and horror being replaced with anger and sorrow. Life goes on, and so will the economy. But the recession will get worse no matter how much money they throw at it, and many of the big, index-driven stocks which depend on economic growth will go on hurting. Also a lot of market action will depend less on the New York tragedy and more on what lies ahead politically; random revenge would further inflame regional hatreds and anything with the faintest hint of a ground war would rekindle memories of Viet Nam. All the money printing will intensify the storm that has been brewing in the financial system for years and, as we have pointed out many times, the worst inflations come during periods of disruption, depression and so on. Tax revenues fall, government expenditures rise, deficits go up, confidence goes down. Trade gets trickier. Will Saudi Arabia always want to be paid for its oil in dollars? In 1994 Barings, Britain's oldest merchant bank, had been speculating on the long side of the Japanese stock market, the Nikkei, although most (all?) Directors didn't know it. As the market drifted lower the Barings trader (the infamous Nick Leeson) tried to support the market using derivatives and massively built up the long position. Then, on January 17, 1995 an earthquake struck Kobe, in Japan's industrial heartland, destroying 25,000 buildings and killing over 3,000 people. Leeson continued to try to plug the market, but it fell sharply and Barings was toast in less than a month. At the time people blamed the earthquake, but in retrospect the market was falling inexorably. It was then 18,000 and now it's 10,000; a number which has nothing to do with earthquakes and everything to do with economic reality. Likewise in the current situation, overwhelming as last week's events were, they will in time be seen only to have intensified trends already in place. And the most important trend already in place has to do with gold, the dollar and confidence in the financial system. For some time now the tide has been turning against the dollar and in favour of gold, in spite of the efforts of big governments, big commercial banks and even big mining companies (where leadership has aligned itself with the banks instead of the men underground) and the economic establishment. These efforts have included activities in the derivatives markets to "stabilize" gold at uneconomically low levels and have led to the establishment of significant short positions. A large proportion of gold held as a bank asset is really a receivable from a speculator or a mine that may, or may not, be able to produce it; a lot of the real stuff is in Uncle Harry's teeth. Much of the other real stuff remains in vaults (some is even under the rubble of the World Trade Center) and is likely to be subject to claims by more than one bank. The same forces which are crying out for "support" for the stock market are almost certainly quietly working to continue to put a lid on the gold price, for the same perceived reason: to bolster confidence in the system (meaning first the dollar, then the euro and the yen.) These efforts may work for a short time, but long term they won't. Leeson wasn't the only one who tried to rig the Japanese market over the last decade, and the big banks certainly lost a lot of gold while holding the price down during the Vietnamese war. Everybody is worried about the stock market while nobody seems to worry about the financial system, but it should be the other way around. Notwithstanding the economy, America will emerge stronger and even more united. The stock market will have its bumps, but it will take care of itself. The money printing will help some sectors: utilities have dividend yields that will look better and better compared to term deposits, food and energy will remain staples and higher gold prices will lead to a renaissance in that sector. Perhaps two years hence we will once again have a hot mining market. It's the money, our money, their money, that you have to watch out for. Because J P Morgan Chase has a huge reach and massive derivatives exposure, its shares should act as a proxy for the global financial system. If their price continues to decline, take out lots more insurance.
9:40a ET Sunday, November 11, 2001 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Reg Howe has a special message of thanks to the "GATA army" all over the world at his Golden Sextant Internet site. And in saying thanks, Reg shows what our struggle is about. You can find his message here: http://www.goldensextant.com/commentary19.html#anchor5941 CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
