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A good debate requires three components: a good format, proper moderation, and a topic which is amenable to this type of exercise. As someone who fancies himself to be a good, amateur “debater”, I was watching for those components when I listened to “The Great Debate” between Bill Murphy of GATA and Jeffrey Christian of the CPM Group, and hosted by veteran broadcaster Jim Puplava.

Regrettably, what I heard when I listened to this “debate” was a flawed format, poor moderation, and a topic which (though no fault of anyone) is simply not suited to this form of scrutiny. My apologies to readers for the need to conduct such a detailed review of this exercise. However, as I shall demonstrate clearly, the entire “optics” of the debate change radically, once such a methodical analysis is completed.

Bear with me as I analyze the somewhat tedious procedural fundamentals which must be properly understood. In return, I dangle this “carrot”: when it comes time to focus on the substance of the debate, I promise readers revelations which are arguably of even greater significance than Christian's infamous “100:1” admission.

First, the general rules of debate must be understood. While those unfamiliar with the legal process may view a debate as being very similar to what takes place in a court of law when two lawyers present their “case”, there are many, very significant differences. Most notably, a trial isn't bound by the artificial constraints of a time limit. Thus, (assuming the judge and lawyers perform their duties properly) in a trial there can be no obstructionism, or stalling – since ultimately every facet of the matter will be explored.

In addition to this, a court of law has an extremely long and detailed set of procedural rules (to prevent either side from gaining advantage through illegitimate tactics), and an extremely vigilant and proactive “referee” (i.e. a judge) to enforce this procedural code of conduct.

Conversely, in the rigid constraints of a short, radio debate, and the relatively informal “rules”, it is very easy to pervert the entire exercise - which is why I cited the three necessary components of a good debate. Now let me review these fundamentals specifically.

To begin with, at the beginning of the broadcast Puplava laid out his “rules” for the debate. Most were self-evident, and not necessary to itemize – with one exception: Puplava insisted that neither side attack the “integrity” of the other person. It is here that Puplava clearly failed in his own role. Not only did Puplava fail to prevent Christian from attacking the integrity of both Bill Murphy and GATA (repeatedly), but Puplava failed to add a further detail to his rules.

The reason why “personal attacks” are not permitted in debates is precisely the reason why gutter-politicians use such tactics relentlessly: they are extremely effective in influencing how an audience perceives the substance of what is said by the individual attacked. Once smeared, a debater's entire arguments are diminished in the eyes of the audience.

Christian was allowed to smear both Murphy and GATA in two ways. First of all, Puplava actually allowed Christian to personally accuse Murphy of “lying” (as I shall highlight later). Secondly (and arguably worse), Puplava allowed Christian to say again and again and again that “GATA always distorts the truth” and “GATA always takes things out of context”. Obviously, it is impossible for Christian to ever present evidence on what GATA “always” does, while it poisons the minds of listeners against GATA, and so Puplava should have warned Christian the first time he crossed that line.

On further “violations”, Puplava would have been left with only one option: penalizing Christian by forfeiting his right to say anything further on that particular point. This is why I would have much preferred this to have been a taped event. In that format, a proper moderator could not only have edited out Christian's abusive remarks toward Murphy and GATA, but also the endless series of totally gratuitous remarks which Christian was allowed to make about himself – as he endeavoured to put himself on a pedestal.

That was Puplava's second procedural failure. Not only must a moderator prevent one side from denigrating the integrity of the other, but he must also prevent the opposite: allowing one opponent to portray himself as being inherently superior to the other.

Along with repeatedly implying that both Murphy and GATA were “dishonest”, Puplava allowed Christian to add additional, totally gratuitous remarks – all in the opening minutes of this debate. First (and on many later occasions) he allowed Christian to lecture Murphy, and in a very condescending manner:

“There are facts, there is the truth, and there is not truth...”

Christian followed up his lecture by proclaiming his own superiority:

“I'm a big guy about truth...” and “There is nothing more important than honesty...”

Because it was obviously impossible for Christian to present an objective case that he was a more honest individual than Murphy, Puplava again should have immediately warned Christian to cease such gratuitous posturing. What made Christian's posturing even more farcical was that he blatantly contradicted himself on several occasions in his later remarks (i.e. he lied) – meaning that Christian can add “shameless hypocrite” to his long list of character flaws.

Christian commenced his sins with one of the first statements to come out of his mouth in the debate, and again I quote:

“In all of my years of involvement in the gold market, I have never seen any evidence of any efforts to manipulate or suppress the price of gold.”

Christian offered no caveats of any kind to qualify that remark. I ask readers to file those words away as you evaluate Christian's “honesty” through the remainder of the debate.

In addition to portraying himself as being “morally superior” to Murphy, Christian was given time to boast about his background.

“I worked for Barrick [Barrick Gold Corporation] from its inception. I advised them to hedge in a number of ways which caused them to earn billions of dollars more than they would have earned otherwise...I have over the course of my career advised many central banks – most central banks in the world, and I've advised them about gold, I've advised them about foreign exchange markets, and I've advised them about other things...”

In this respect, Puplava was justified in allowing Christian's boasting – because his professional credentials are relevant in deciding how much weight to attach to Christian's opinions. But Christian is not simply an “expert” about gold and bankers, as he stated so clearly, he is a banker, himself.

If the five years he spent working for Goldman Sachs didn't prove this fact, Christian leaves absolutely no doubt about where his own allegiance lies:

“There's something...I need to say here. I have become extremely concerned with the attitude of certain government officials in going after people in the financial markets in what appears to me to be an effort to find scapegoats. I have seen over-zealous prosecution, and I'm going to take the Constitution's approach that everyone's innocent until proven guilty.”

Given that these are more totally gratuitous remarks by Christian, let me add a few gratuitous remarks, myself. First of all, Wall Street banks spend a hundred times more money lobbying Washington politicians every year than GATA's entire budget since its inception. Yet here we have Jeffrey Christian depicting Wall Street as “victims” being picked-on by big, bad GATA, and “overzealous politicians”.

It is here that Christian provides us with yet another glimpse of the rampant hypocrisy which is a way of life with these bankers. When the bankers were making billions of dollars in illegal naked shorting (and destroying the lives of corporations, their employees, and shareholders) that was nothing but “good, old free-market capitalism”. However, in the 2008 crash (which the banksters engineered, themselves), when they claimed that other market players were engaging in naked shorting of U.S. big-banks, then the banksters immediately ran crying to regulators for protection – but only for themselves.

When Wall Street's over-leveraged, totally fraudulent, multi-trillion dollar Ponzi schemes imploded, they ran crying to politicians for hand-outs/bail-outs. Now that they're trying to collect on their interest-rate swap scams, and their credit-default swap scams – to the tune of trillions of dollars, all we hear out of the mouths of these hypocrites is about “the sanctity of contracts”.

When their trading algorithms allow Wall Street banks to literally rig the markets to such a degree that they were making profits every day (for months at a time), they bragged about their “profits”, and extolled the virtues of this “innovation”. When those same (inherently unstable) algorithms blew-up, and caused massive losses, Wall Street demanded a “do-over” for thousands of legitimate trades – because they were not fast enough to position themselves on the winning side of those trades first.

In the rigged casinos which the United States calls “equities markets”, Wall Street bankers are only allowed to win.

Thus, Jeffrey Christian can dazzle listeners to “The Great Debate” with his status as an “expert”, but let us remember that he is an expert banker. In other words, he belongs to a class of people who are:

1. never capable of looking at any issue objectively

2. believe themselves to be better than everyone else

3. thus believe they are above the law, and entitled to make up their own rules

For those out there who believe I am over-stating my own case, I would ask that readers suspend such a judgment until they have listened to the entire debate, and also invest some time in reading through a few of the dozens of commentaries I have written, documenting the most recent, decade-long crime spree of the Wall Street banks.

Let me (finally) get to the last procedural issue in this debate: that of the topic, itself. Even on the surface, the issue of gold (and silver) manipulation is not one which is suited to such a relatively short debate. To begin with, one side (Bill Murphy of GATA) was in the position of having to positively establish his own proposition, namely the existence of manipulation in precious metals markets.

Conversely, Jeffrey Christian of the CPM Group was in the much easier position of simply trying to rebut (and discredit) Murphy. In other words, the “onus” was on Murphy – and thus the “deck was stacked” in Christian's favor. The obvious parallel is a criminal trial, where is it far more difficult for the prosecution to establish guilt, than for the defendant to merely deny it.

Thus, what we observed throughout the “debate” was that every time Murphy was given a chance to present an item/argument, Christian's response was (literally) to simply deny everything. Even worse, what Christian insisted on doing repeatedly was to continually try to trip Murphy up on tertiary details, and draw attention away from the substance of what Murphy attempted to present.

Naturally, this resulted in a somewhat pointless stalemate. It was impossible (for either side) to verify which side was actually recounting facts, and which side was mistaken (or dishonest). Even with these flaws, however, this didn't mean that the entire exercise was destined to be a waste of time. Puplava could (and did) structure questions which reversed the onus onto Christian – and gave Murphy some rare opportunities to engage in some (productive) “counter-punching”.

In the next part of this review, I will finally be able to focus upon the substantive content of this debate. It is at that point where I will deliver upon my own promise. To whet the appetites of readers, I will leave them with this: the same Jeffrey Christian who categorically stated that he had “never seen any evidence of any efforts to manipulate or suppress the price of gold” spent most of his own time describing (in considerable detail) the various forms of precious metals manipulation, which he had encountered over the course of his career.

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written by fu.rieger, May 24, 2010

Jeff Christian: "... cheats and whores like Gata."

http://www.bullionbullscanada....d=6&id=616

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written by swsprime, May 20, 2010

Good and Bad, Legal and Illegal, Jeffrey Christian tosses these concepts around like a shister lawyer who confuses us by suggesting Justice and the Law are the same thing.

This whole central banking fiat conspiracy centers on two things:

1. Is about cheating here and now the vast majority of people of their hard earned cash by printing more and more currency. This is what leads to inflation and thus robbery of this generation.

2. Is about then holding the value of what should be a devalued currency up without high interest rates by manipulating the price of our only true currency, Precious Metals, down, which will empty the US treasury of Gold and then ultimately fail, causing rampant future inflation and poverty, robbing future generations.

Here, Mr (Bankster Mouthpiece) Christian, is your true measure; Theft.

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written by Jeff Nielson, May 19, 2010

Paxjds, you're using up some of my "material" for Part III. When I got to the WORST of Christian's behavior during the debate, I was going to highlight the huge gulf in integrity between the two.

Now everyone's going to think I'm "stealing" those ideas from you (lol)! Oh well, I regularly acknowledge the (many) ideas I get from readers - so hopefully people will give me the benefit of the doubt.

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written by paxjds, May 19, 2010

SWS, what you are describing in Christian's own words is called projection
in Psychology and is a charectertic in several Disorders. It is like a man commiting adultry on his wife who denies it by accusing his wife having affairs. Obviousley IMHO the man has no honor or deep altruistic principles. Murphy on the other hand is honorable as GATA is an organaization that attemts to blow the whistle and expose corruption by the banksters and wall street thugs. How few of us have such a noble position in our daqiley occupation as Murphy.

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written by Jeff Nielson, May 19, 2010

SWS, you expressed many of my own thoughts - especially the last one.

First, the banksters let Christian represent them at the CFTC hearings, and now in a debate. Yes, they must think that Christian is one of their "best and brightest". Then again, remember "how low the bar is set" in the bankers' world.

Good old "Bazooka" Paulson was CEO at Goldman Sachs, and then named Treasury Secretary - at which time he was revealed to the world as a dithering fool.

After sleeping through his term as president of the New York Fed, Tim-the-tax-cheat Geithner was also named Treasury Secretary. All you have to do is listen to Geithner once to know that this is a career "shoe-shine boy" - who has been handed positions he wasn't capable of performing, simply because he served Wall Street faithfully. And then there is "Helicopter" Ben Bernanke...

Apparently, in the world of the banksters, OBEDIANCE counts for much more than intelligence.

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written by swsprime, May 19, 2010

Actually Jeff, I'm really glad you were able to analyze what this little sh*t said. I must admit in truth here, his diatribe was so boring that I either had to switch it off half way or fall asleep.

The half I heard was full of invectives, including the word 'lying' and 'distorting the truth', the type of insult Puplava expressly forbade in his opening address. In contrast Murphy kept his cool and tried to bring a sense of debate to whole thing. Neither Christian or Puplava came out well from this.

One thing I will say about Christian is that he must be the defacto sole voice of the Bankster Cartel, because no one else is fighting in his corner. If he is the best they can produce then I don't see their scam lasting much longer, do you?

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written by paxjds, May 17, 2010

Hello Alpha,
To answer your question, that is why they are called Banksters. You are an altruist. But look at the words of evil that YOU used to descibe what is going on by your bankers(Now Banksters): illegal, unconstitutional, perversion, monsters, moral deprevation. Alpha, YOU answered your own question! They have lots of money(as they print it thru the FED)which is power, which buys politicians and judges which is illlegal, unconstitutional, a perversion of the constitution, which makes them monsters like King George, which is a moral decrepitation. Well said Alpha, and hopefully leading to OMEGA and the End of the Crooked Federal Reserves that think they are above the law. The will not even answer Congessmens questions. They do think they are above the law. They need to be taken down and the Constitution be made the real law of the land once again.

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written by Jeff Nielson, May 17, 2010

Some more, excellent comments.

It appears that once again, as with the CFTC hearings, even though the process was flawed, the RESULTS that GATA have been instrumental in achieving will continue to "shine a light" on the dark places that the banksters have kept hidden for many years.

And the problem for Christian (or any other "foot soldier" whom the bankers nominate) is that while they may be able to muddle through these "live" appearances, when the transcripts/recordings are analyzed afterward that the COLLECTIVE body of testimony simply won't hold together - and picking it apart becomes child's play.

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written by caryc, May 17, 2010

I reckon that Jeffrey Christian has been so aggresive in attacking GATA is that he is trying to diffuse the loss of credibility he incurred when he "mis-spoke" in his testimony to the CFTC. Strangely enough the more he tries, the more he reveals how biased he is and entrenched he is to his vested interests. GATA has been trying to bring more transparency to the Gold dealings of Central Banks and Bullion Banks. Jeffey Christian is an apologist for the status quo of unfair markets and secrecy. I have followed Jim Puplava for over eight years listening almost every week to his internet broadcasts. On this occassion, he has fallen very short of the standards he set himself. So much for being impartial and fair.

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written by alpha, May 17, 2010

There is the Circle of Life and there is the Circle of Death. The Constitution says that money must be backed by gold. But money is no longer backed by gold thus becoming illegal fiat currency. Ironically however, it is illegal to use anything but this unconstitutional money as tender. The perversion only begins here. Why was the Glass Steagall Act passed, and why was it repealed? There are laws made for the betterment of the country and there are laws made for the betterment of self-interests. Was the Act repealed for the betterment of the country or was it repealed as a result of a self-interest lobby? Is it any surprise that Lloyd ("doing God's work") Blankfein testifies that nothing was done outside the law? Of course nothing was done outside the law because they helped write, or in this case repeal, the law. Put commercial and investment banking together and the resulting entity can no longer be called a "bank". Real banks at least serve in the best interest of their customers. Today's so-called investment banks are nothing but monsters replete with moral decrepitation. Where is it all going to end? The Circle of Life is a complete circle and the Circle of Death is a dead end. Credit to Ron Paul, Main Street and GATA for standing up strongly for what they believes is right for America.

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written by Jeff Nielson, May 17, 2010

Hi Paxjds.

As I said in a message to Chris Powell of GATA, here "you guys" have worked your butts off for a decade to expose the manipulation of precious metals, and all you REALLY needed to do was just put Jeffrey Christian in front of a microphone a few times (lol).

I wanted to just dive in to the "blockbuster" tid-bits right away, but sometimes you have to be disciplined and explain all the preliminary issues first. I hope that READERS have the patience to read Part I all the way through - as it will make the points made in Part II much clearer.

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written by paxjds, May 17, 2010

Christianson played blind, deft, and dumb. Suprise, Suprise as Gomer would say. But no, I am not suprised. The Banksters are crooked as the path to hell. A lot of smart guys in the financial/banking/investment worlds are writing great blogs from their web pages exposing the Banksters and government. These honest whistleblowers and investigative blog reporters are doing the Job that mainstream media did over 60 years ago. Expose corruption at every opportunity! The Banksters and their Pawns like Christianson do the opposite reporting dis -information and sometimes coverup. J.S. Kim is an example of todays honest, educated, and principled blog writer who today wrote in Seeking Alpha "Why we dont need central banks". Jeff Nielson of BBulls and JS Kim are two of the new breed intellectuals whom by their writings stand up to this corrupt system we live under. The faster we can get rid of the Federal Reserve, the faster we can solve this mess thet the FED, banks and Congress made. Christianson is just one of their errand boys doing the public dirty work. Our founding Fathers warned us of letting the Banks get in charge of the printing presses. Now we know why as the worlds economy and currencies are totally crumbling because of the Banksters/FED with the government looking the other way. Till the Three Branches of Government do away with the Federal Reserve, and then reign in the remaining banks, there is no real hope of saving the Republic that our fore fathers founded.

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written by Jeff Nielson, May 17, 2010

SailorTony, at the risk of possibly using-up some material which I COULD have inserted into my next piece, if this debate were a "boxing match", then Bill Murphy would have been the winner. Even though Christian arguably "scored more points", he would have been disqualified for his incessant "low blows" against Bill Murphy.

Murphy was the "winner" in another sense: he didn't sink to Christian's level. He maintained his own integrity and professionalism - despite the way he was continually baited by Christian.

To me, that says a great deal about GATA's credibility. Meanwhile, Christian told us all we need to know about his own credibility.

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written by sailortony, May 17, 2010

Very professional analysis of this unfair debate. Cannot wait to read about the treats you promised.

This debate was a trap and Bill Murphy had lost before the discussion started.

I do respect the man for accepting to participate knowing this. Thanks to him, Goliath is in trouble.

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