Holter expresses his disappointment with the quality of the debate on gold manipulation at the New Orleans Investment Conference.
NEW ORLEANS – I attended the New Orleans Investment Conference this past week as the guest of Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee’s (GATA) Bill Murphy and Chris Powell for which I am highly grateful. There were many good and thoughtful speakers. I specifically wanted to attend this conference for two reasons; Alan Greenspan (Mr. Magoo) was a keynote speaker and I not so much wanted to hear what he had to say but, more importantly, how he answered audience questions.
What piqued my interest most about this conference, though, was the proposed debate between GATA’s Powell and Doug Casey of Casey Research. The topic was: “Is gold manipulated or not?” I had such high expectations for this but unfortunately was left disappointed.
The format was not much of a debate; each speaker was allowed seven minutes to lay out their case followed by a four minute rebuttal period each. The problem was, they did not interact nor did they debunk the other’s position. The debate, if you can call it that, was one-sided where Powell laid out documentation and fact while Casey gave us his opinion.
Powell started off and was pretty much 100% factual as he laid out printed documentation from the Federal Reserve and the BIS which confirms central bank activity in the gold market.