GATA is shocked that the WSJ has published 2 separate mis or dis-info stories on gold in a single day. The WSJ is a critical component in the MOPE Machine, and their biased reporting against gold should be expected by those who understand the PM market.
From GATA's Chris Powell:
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Today The Wall Street Journal published two stories about efforts by governments to hinder the acquisition of gold by their people. The first, about Turkey, was dispatched to you earlier: http://www.gata.org/node/11161. The second, about India, is appended.
Despite GATA’s many hectorings of its reporters, some done in person, the Journal refuses to acknowledge the big underlying story here, the danger to government power that is posed by an independent, competitive, supra-national currency, a currency whose suppression by Western central banks is a matter of long public if largely unreported record.
But as always Kitco’s Jon Nadler is on speed dial when it’s important for journalists to miss the point.
“The permanently bullish gold crowd has banked on salvation to come from India,” Nadler says, “and what do we do when it’s not very active?”
No, the permanently bullish crowd is banking on exposure of the massive naked short position in gold that is maintained by the big bullion banks at the behest of Western central banks. But the mainstream financial journalists at the Journal and elsewhere adhere religiously to the Nadler rule of gold market analysis: Never, never, never put a critical or even relevant question to the biggest participants in the market, central bankers.
* * *
Indian Gold: Its Worth and Its Wait
By Biman Mukherji, Debiprasad Nayak, and Tatyana Shumsky
The Wall Street JOurnal
Tuesday, March 22, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230381290457729789152712479…
MUMBAI — The world’s biggest gold market is on strike.
In India, gold sellers closed up shop last Saturday to protest the government’s decision to boost levies on sales of the precious metal. India accounts for more than a quarter of global consumer gold demand. The sudden halt in trading is sending gold prices lower.
Gold futures have declined 1% since last Friday, when India’s finance ministry issued an order to double the import duty on gold to 4% and instituted a 0.3% tax on most gold-jewelry sales.
In India, gold has deep cultural significance: Parents buy it for daughters’ weddings, and the metal is given as a gift on some religious holidays. It also is a common vehicle for investment. Buying by Indian consumers is so substantial that any sustained reduction in demand would remove a key pillar of support to gold prices, analysts say.
“The permanently bullish gold crowd has banked on salvation to come from India, and what do we do when it’s not very active?” said Jon Nadler, senior analyst with Kitco Metals Inc. North America.
Gold futures on Thursday fell $7.70 a troy ounce, or 0.5%, to $1,642.30. That brings the losses this month to 4%, although gold still is up for the year.
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