Andrew Maguire has been a controversial figure in the gold/silver world ever since he blew the whistle on JP Morgan’s silver manipulation. The information provided by Maguire to GATA was presented by GATA’s Bill Murphy at a hearing held by the CFTC on the precious metals market manipulation in March 2010. Maguire had originally sent an email to someone in the CFTC enforcement which detailed how the precious metals would be attacked two days later when the non-farm payroll report was released. Maguire wrote to the CFTC after the attack:
It is common knowledge here in London among the metals traders that it is JPM’s intent to flush out and cover as many shorts as possible prior to any discussion in March about position limits. I feel sorry for all those not in this loop. A serious amount of money was made and lost today and in my opinion as a result of the CFTC’s allowing by your own definition an illegal concentrated and manipulative position to continue.
GATA has detailed the entire event in this article: LINK.
After Bill Murphy’s testimony at the CFTC’s hearing, Jeffrey Christian – a known shill for the bullion banks – publicly slashed and burned Maguire’s reputation with highly slanderous assertions about Maguire’s background and experience. Christian’s remarks were intentionally deceitful, but the damage was done. The fraudulent attack on Maguire opened the door of doubt in the minds of many about the credibility of market intel delivered by Maguire to the public via venues like Eric King’s King World News.
I bring this up because a friend and colleague of mine – someone who has been around the precious metals sector longer than me, sent email to a myself and one other person asking for our thoughts on Maguire’s latest interview in King World News: A Historic Event Is About To Shock The Gold Market
The interview is worth a listen and I believe there’s a high probability that Maguire’s insight and assertions are accurate. Having said that, I wanted to share my response to the email, because it explains why I think Maguire’s intel is good. The first part of my response references some comments made to my colleague from someone who expressed concern about the potential for Russia and China to unload gold like Venezuela did in order to avoid financial trouble:
Goldman has been working on getting Venezuela separated from its gold for over a year. Recall about a year ago that Goldman sent VZ a proposal for a leasing transaction. VZ was an easy prey. In my opinion, the way that VZ has been squeezed out of its gold tells us just how desperate the bullion banks are to source real physical gold. This move was analogous to taking Halloween candy from a little kid. But China/Russia are a different matter.
Russia running into financial trouble? Please show me any evidence of that OUTSIDE of western propaganda reports. Russia continues to add a lot of gold to its Central Bank position every month. It that the behavior of an entity worried about liquidity? Have you looked at Russia’s debt/GDP ratio? As of 2014, the latest data available, Russia’s debt/GDP is 13%. Russia is not in financial trouble. The western media wants us to believe that Russia is in financial trouble.
China? C’mon. China has $3.4 trillion in diversified FX reserves that needs to be netted against is sovereign debt position. China’s outright sovereign debt/GDP is 41% as of 2014. The number does not net out FX reserves.
As of July China’s household/corporate debt was 280% of GDP. The U.S. total debt (Govt + private sector) is 340% of GDP. The highest of any country in the world. US FX reserves are about $35 billion – i.e. nothing. Does the U.S. even have title to any gold that we use to add to its FX reserves? Doubtful. If any country is in danger of going insolvent, it’s the U.S if the rest of the world refuses to take any more paper dollars.
What if China were to include its true gold holdings at market in its FX reserves number?
As for Andrew, I had a long phone conversation with Eric King this past summer about Andrew. Eric is adamant that everything Andrew says is based in fact. [note: I came away from my conversation convinced that Maguire’s intel was bona fide. As Eric and I discussed, the cartel has the backing of the U.S./British/EU Governments, which makes it impossible to predict the timing on actual occurrence of the events that we know ultimately will occur]
It’s hard to know for sure because Andrew references a lot of information that we have no way of verifying independently. For instance, he asserts that liquidity is leaving the Loco London market. Is there a way to verify this other than to have faith in Andrew’s assertions? If there is I’d love to see it.
Having said that, everything Andrew is talking about is exactly what Frank Veneroso said would eventually happen back in the late 1990’s. Frank never laid out “who and how” but he said eventually the western banks/CBs would be unable to contain the physical market with paper because the demand for physical would blow up the paper suppression schemes.
Here’s the other key assertion that we have no way of verifying: “the aggressive and predatory bullion banks that largely infest the swap dealer category of the COT report recognize the gold market has changed and are about to split ranks and reposition more bullishly, a position they would already have if they had not accrued such large underwater proprietary positions”
If you guys have any way of verifying that assertion, then we would know that Andrew is 100% bona fide.
At this stage, I have no reason to disbelieve Andrew based on my own observations and research into the precious metals market. I really want to believe everything that he says is happening right now, but I’ve been taking a wait and see mind-set with regard to his assertions.