I haven't seen any announcement of a debate on the GATA website or in an email, which is GATA's standard procedure. Sure is at a weird time Eastern. I get the impression from the announcement below that Puplava is sympathetic to Christian's position. A little odd? I'll catch the tape, which I assume Puplava will provide in due time.

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http://www.kitco.com/reports/CPM_GATAdebate2.html

Montreal -- (Kitco News) --CPM’s Jeffrey Christian is hoping to clear the air tomorrow (12 AM PDT, 3 AM EDT) and clarify his stand on gold market manipulation in a debate with GATA.

The debate, moderated by Jim Puplava of Financial Sense Newshour, will air both on kitco.com and financialsense.com.

Puplava wanted to help settle the rumors that Christian said the gold market was leveraged 100 to one during the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) hearings back in March. Christian said that the paper market is 100 times the size of the physical market -- this was misinterpreted by many, said Puplava.

“We wanted to calm investors’ fears about keeping money in storage with a bullion vault,” said Puplava in an interview with Kitco News. “We also wanted to address the issue of gold manipulation, just because the gold market is down doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy behind it,” he said.

As for what he hopes to accomplish with the debate, Puplava said, “if you are in the conspiracy camp, you will probably stay in that camp. If you are a seasoned investor, I think the clarity of facts will be more appealing. And if you are undecided, at least now you will have more information at your disposal.”

The CFTC hearings were originally held in part because of long-term complaints from organizations such as the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) that said the gold and silver commodity markets have been subject to extensive price suppression manipulation by the U.S. government and its trading partners.

The Great Gold Debate – Gold market manipulation or general market forces – You Decide will air May 15, 2010 at 3 am EDT (12 AM PDT) on www.kitco.com
and http://feeds.feedburner.com/fsn

--By Daniela Cambone of Kitco News dcambone@kitco.com

http://www.kitco.com/reports/CPM_GATAdebate2.html