Judge orders Fed to deliver gold records for her review

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

GATA today scored a small but perhaps auspicious victory over the Federal Reserve in our lawsuit seeking access to the Fed's secret gold files. The judge presiding over GATA's federal freedom-of-information lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Ellen Segal Huvelle, granted GATA's motion to order the Fed to produce in complete form for the judge's private review 20 gold-related documents the Fed has sought to keep secret. The judge ordered the Fed to deliver the documents by Friday.

Through its lawyers, William J. Olson P.C. of Vienna, Virginia -- www.LawAndFreedom.com -- GATA has argued that the Fed's production of gold-related documents has been so inadequate and the Fed's arguments for keeping them secret so weak that the court should review the documents acknowledged by the Fed and order the Fed to answer 25 questions from GATA about the Fed's search for relevant information.

While Judge Huvelle still could grant at any time the Fed's motion to dismiss GATA's lawsuit, her ruling today at least implies a little skepticism about the Fed and its tactics. Combined with today's statement by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee's Subcommittee on Monetary Policy (http://www.gata.org/node/9495), Judge Huvelle's ruling gives hope that the Fed's enormous secret power to rig markets and bestow the most fantastic patronage on a parasitic financial elite can be brought to account eventually.

The judge's order to the Fed to produce documents for her private review can be found at GATA's Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedLawsuitCourtOrder-01-10-2011.pdf

Those who are skeptical of GATA's complaint that the Federal Reserve is part of an international gold-price rigging scheme should reflect on the meaning of the Fed's refusal to disclose all its gold-related records, records that include gold swap arrangements with foreign banks:

http://www.gata.org/node/8192

If the U.S. gold reserves are just sitting somewhere, inert, unencumbered, and unused for surreptitious market intervention, what's the problem with full disclosure?

Financial journalists unafraid of aggravating the world's financial powers should start putting gold-related questions to the Fed and other central banks and stop simply assuming that secrecy should be the normal order of things with central banks and gold.

And people everywhere who believe in free markets in the monetary metals and who have not already supported GATA financially can join our struggle here:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

This struggle could have been undertaken easily and likely more effectively by the World Gold Council, which aims to represent gold mining companies and gold investors. But the council's indifference to questions of surreptitious central bank intervention in the gold market has left the struggle to GATA. We need your help to pursue this struggle to victory for free markets, limited government, and a better, fairer world.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.