Recent correspondence between U.S. Rep. Alex X. Mooney, R-West Virginia, and the U.S. Treasury Department suggests that the department has given the Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund unfettered control of a portion of U.S. gold reserves.

For most of this decade owning gold and gold-related investments has required the patience of Job, and the sector is so obscure that it is hard to be sure of anything. But for months now the unusual developments have been piling up so much that it may be possible to regain some optimism.

A U.S. representative who has been pressing the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with questions about the gold and silver markets has asked Attorney General William P. Barr to try intervene and get answers from the commission. In a letter dated November 1 and made public today, the U.S. representative, Alex W. Mooney, Republican of West Virginia, commends Barr for the Justice Department’s recent criminal prosecution of manipulation in the monetary metals futures markets.

At least the Financial Times now has come clean about its hostility to gold – as well as to free markets and elementary journalism. Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) friend Chris Kniel of Orinda, California, sent to the newspaper’s chief economic columnist, Martin Wolf, the excellent summary of gold and silver market manipulation just written by gold researcher Ronan Manly.