by Stewart Dougherty, Sprott Money:

Evidence is mounting that the Deep State (DS) is starting to lose the dirtiest financial war in history: their War on Gold. More deeply, it is a war against something the Deep State profoundly loathes: personal financial liberty. The War on Gold, which has raged for 37+ years, has generated more than $1 trillion in criminal profits for the Deep State plunderers, while costing the worldwide owners of physical gold multiple trillions of dollars. All of this is coming to an end.

Due to its criminal hyper-manipulation, gold’s price has become a paradox: its weakness actually reflects its strength. With everything that has been thrown at it, it is astounding that its price is anything north of zero. The fact that it has been resilient at around $1,200.00 per ounce should concern the manipulators, because if this is as low as they can take it despite their full-spectrum, multi-billion dollar assault against it, then it is defeating them. Which is not surprising. By every conceivable, objective financial and monetary measure, gold is one of the most underpriced assets on earth. It is not going to stay that way. (Most of the dynamics we will discuss also apply to silver, but to streamline this article, we will focus on gold.)

The Deep State’s first strategic objective in the War on Gold has been to steal as much money as possible by conspiratorially rigging its price. They have perpetrated this crime in the full knowledge that it will never be investigated or prosecuted, because it is state sponsored. The Deep State is the state, and never prosecutes itself for its own crimes, no matter how flagrant and egregious they are.

The second, broader strategic objective has been to discredit gold as a monetary asset and safe financial haven throughout the west. The Deep State realized at the outset of the war that it would be impossible to achieve this in the east, which has a deep, cultural affinity for gold, so they have confined this gambit the west.

There are eight primary tactics in the War on Gold. Seven of them are generally known by those who study the gold market; one of them is little known or appreciated. The unknown tactic is actually the most important and effective tactic of all, while also being the Deep State’s Achilles’ heel.

The tactics in the War on Gold are:

1) Randomly and unpredictably attack the gold price in the futures markets, producing large price whipsaws, investor losses, and a generalized spirit of price uncertainty, danger and concern; over time, make existing and prospective investors view the market as a corrupt casino rigged against them, causing them to capitulate and leave the field;

2) Employ the most advanced, covert “Black Psychological Operations” (PsyOps) methods, customized for the financial sector by the CIA’s Division of Psychological Warfare, the Fed, the Treasury, the ECB and the BIS, to destroy gold sentiment in the west. As part of this campaign, use the Mainstream Financial Media (MFM) to conduct a continual propaganda campaign denigrating gold in every respect, destroying interest in it;

3) Fraudulently overstate official holdings to create the illusion of massive supply overhang;

4) Sterilize investment funds by steering them into non-auditable paper proxies (e.g., ETFs);

5) Weaken, then destroy the dealer network by killing product demand, spiking dealer costs (e.g., required hedging against relentless price volatility), causing large unhedged losses, demonizing dealers as money launderers and crooks, and wiping out profitability / business viability;

6) Financially weaken miners via crushed prices, making them dependent upon bullion bank (DS) financing and debt, and forcing them to comply with bullion bank orders;

7) Paint phony price charts that enable the “financial services industry” (stock brokers, investment advisers, bankers, etc.) to make gold investing appear stupid, and talk people out of buying gold, particularly in physical form; if this fails, sterilize investment funds by steering them into phony, paper gold;

8) Create a marketing blackout throughout the west (which is the Achilles’ heel).

Tactics #1 and 8 are the subject of this article, because they are inextricably linked. It would be impossible for the Deep State to employ Tactic #1 if it were not for their simultaneous use of Tactic #8.

As we know, Tactic #1 has been carried out by years’ worth of massive, unpredictably-timed, electronic, naked-short price attacks primarily conducted on the Comex, the Deep State’s captured and non-regulated Command and Control Center. GATA has long documented in exquisite and laudable detail the gold price-rigging scandal, and Deutsche Bank’s admission in late 2016 that they and numerous other major banks manipulated the gold market for years ended, once and for all, any possible doubt about gold market corruption.

As is typical in Deep State-sponsored financial crimes, none of the Deep State criminals ever goes to jail; instead, they simply pay fines to the Deep State itself. Deep State criminality is a closed system of plunder from which the profits never leave; they merely circulate from one Deep State pocket to another.

Tactic #8, the complete lack of industry-sponsored gold marketing throughout the west, is a crucial component of the War on Gold. Without Tactic #8, the Deep State would be incapable of employing Tactic #1, because the criminalized, fractional reserve gold exchanges, primarily the Comex, would no longer exist. They would no longer exist because they would be unable to source even the minimal amount of physical gold required to create the false illusion of legitimacy, which would fully expose them as being nothing but the paper metal frauds they already are for all intents and purposes.

According to the Mainstream Financial Media, gold is a “commodity.” This deliberate mischaracterization of gold is intended to deflect attention away from its unparalleled monetary importance, and make it appear no different in nature from corn, natural gas or pork bellies. Rarely has a greater monetary lie ever been perpetuated.

Gold is not a commodity; it is the world’s only natural and universal money, and therefore its pre-eminent consumer product. From the time of its discovery over 6,000 years ago, human beings have instinctively realized that gold is incomparable as pure, honest, incorruptible, reliable, functional, lasting, valuable, and true money and wealth. This is precisely why the Deep State swindlers despise it. It is the antithesis of the immoral, baseless, corrupt, predatory, fraudulent fiat currencies they endlessly and parasitically counterfeit into oblivion at extraordinary profit to themselves and crushing expense to their victims, the people.

Providers of consumer products and services know that their offerings must be marketed. Not even the best of them sell themselves; they must be sold.

In 2016 alone, corporate managements worldwide spent over $1 trillion to advertise and promote their goods and services. They paid this astronomical sum because they know that marketing is indispensable to commercial success. Marketing is not an expense; it is an investment in profit.

We all recognize the phrases marketers have created to bring their products to life: “Just Do It,” “Don’t Leave Home without It,” “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” “Everywhere You Want to Be;” “Good to the Last Drop,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Be All You Can Be,” “I Love New York,” “We Bring Good Things to Life,” “Think Different,” “Like a Good Neighbor, …;” “When it Absolutely, Positively Has to be There Overnight,” “We Try Harder,” “Diamonds are Forever,” among so many memorable others.

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